Information held by Transport Scotland relating to Fuel Duty, Vehicle Excise Duty and Reforming Motoring Taxes: EIR release

Information requested

1. Could you supply all documentation held by Transport Scotland, including correspondence sent and received (including internal), minutes/notes from meetings, briefings, and analysis, about fuel and excise duty, as well as reforming motoring taxes, from the past three months?

Response

As the information you have requested is ‘environmental information’ for the purposes of the Environmental Information (Scotland) Regulations 2004 (EIRs), we are required to deal with your request under those Regulations. We are applying the exemption at section 39(2) of the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 (FOISA), so that we do not also have to deal with your request under FOISA.

This exemption is subject to the ‘public interest test’. Therefore, taking account of all the circumstances of this case, we have considered if the public interest in disclosing the information outweighs the public interest in applying the exemption. We have found that, on balance, the public interest lies in favour of upholding the exemption, because there is no public interest in dealing with the same request under two different regimes. This is essentially a technical point and has no material effect on the outcome of your request.

I enclose a copy of some of the information you requested, in annex B to this letter.

Some of the information you have requested is available from the Scottish Government website and outlined below.

Under regulation 6(1)(b) of the EIRs, we do not have to give you information which is already publicly available and easily accessible to you in another form or format. If, however, you do not have internet access to obtain this information from the website listed, then please contact me again and I will send you a paper copy.

Fuel Duty and Vehicle Excise Duty are entirely reserved to the UK Government.

In the period 3 month prior to your request, searches undertaken have not identified any, minutes/notes from meetings, briefings, analysis held by Transport Scotland solely regarding these matters. There has been one FOI request via correspondence which has been completed, and the response and request is published on the Scottish Government Website.

The Scottish Government seeks to engage the UK Government to take a four-nation approach to the reform of motoring taxes, such as Fuel Duty and Vehicle Excise Duty. This position is outlined in the recently published draft Scotland's Climate Change Plan – 2026-2040 which states:

Motoring Tax Reform: We continue to urge the UK Government to reform Fuel Duty and develop a four-nations approach to motoring taxation that supports EV uptake and car use reduction while addressing revenue loss.

Where this has been outlined in briefings, meetings, emails relating to wider matters, extracts of those within scope of your request have been made and are included in Annex B to this response. Some material that has been identified includes documents sent to Transport Scotland from external sources. Where this this material forms part of published documents, links to these have been provided.

About FOI

The Scottish Government is committed to publishing all information released in response to Freedom of Information requests. View all FOI responses at https://www.gov.scot/foi-responses.

FOI 202500490965 - Information released - Annex B

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