Documentation regarding Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care GP walk-in centres meeting: FOI Review

Information requested

Original request: 202500492259

On what date was the 12th October meeting first scheduled? Where did the meeting take place? Did all participants join the meeting in person, or did some join virtually? Please provide all correspondence, by email or direct messaging application, which discussed the scheduling of the meeting.

Furthermore, please provide all briefing materials prepared ahead of the 12th October meeting and the agenda for the meeting, and all notes/minutes recording what was discussed at the meeting.

Response

Further to my letter of 17/12/2025, I have now completed my review of our response to your request under the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 (FOISA) for:

“On what date was the 12th October meeting first scheduled? Where did the meeting take place? Did all participants join the meeting in person, or did some join virtually? Please provide all correspondence, by email or direct messaging application, which discussed the scheduling of the meeting.

Furthermore, please provide all briefing materials prepared ahead of the 12th October meeting and the agenda for the meeting, and all notes/minutes recording what was discussed at the meeting.”

In your review you have queried the application of section 30(b) of FOISA to withhold from disclosure, the contents of a letter sent to Dr Iain Morrison on 10th October 2025 and stated “there is substantial
public interest in fully understanding how a meeting of this nature happened on a Sunday during the SNP conference.”

I have been asked to re-examine your request, to decide whether the original response should be confirmed, with or without modifications, as appropriate, or a fresh decision be substituted. I can confirm that I was not involved in the handling or decision-making around the original response. I have considered this case again, and have conducted a comprehensive review of the response, and the reasons behind withholding the requested information.

I have concluded that the original decision should be confirmed, with modifications.

Having reviewed the full letter and response to your request, I am of the view that the majority of the contents of the letter to Dr Morrison dated 10th October 2025 are not relevant to your request and are out of the scope of your initial request Therefore, I am in agreement that only the line already provided, is for disclosure.

Whilst re-evaluating the searches commissioned in your initial request, I found an email chain that was not included in the original response. Please accept my sincere apologies for this oversight.

I have included this email chain as an attachment to this letter.

An exemption under section 38(1)(b) of FOISA (personal information) applies to a small amount of the information requested because it is personal data of a third party, i.e. names and contact details of individuals, and disclosing it would contravene the data protection principles in Article 5(1) of the General Data Protection Regulation and in section 34(1) of the Data Protection Act 2018. This exemption is not subject to the ‘public interest test’, so we are not required to consider if the public interest in disclosing the information outweighs the public interest in applying the exemption. 

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 202500495990 - Information released - Annex

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