National Clinical Director letter to therapists information: FOI release

Information requested

“Time period: 6 July 2020 to 10 July 2020 inclusive.

I am requesting the recorded information held by the Scottish Government relating to the drafting, clearance, authorisation, and publication of the ‘National Clinical Director letter to therapists’ dated 8 July 2020, and the communications that directly preceded it.

1) Channels used for contact between Sara Conroy and Professor Jason Leitch 

Please provide copies of all recorded communications between Professor Jason Leitch, or his office, and Sara Conroy, or CSP Scotland, during the period above, relating to massage, sports massage, close contact services, reopening, or the 8 July letter.

This includes, where held:

• emails and attachments
• Microsoft Teams messages
• SMS text messages
• WhatsApp messages
• meeting invites, calendar entries, and any recorded call notes or meeting notes

If messaging records are not held, please confirm this explicitly, and confirm what searches were undertaken to identify whether such records exist.

2) Drafting, clearance, authorisation, and sign off route for the 8 July letter

Please provide:

• all draft versions of the 8 July letter, including tracked changes and comments where held
• any briefing notes, submissions, or internal emails discussing the letter’s purpose, scope, wording, or distribution
• the names or roles of those who approved and or authorised the final wording, and any recorded approvals, authorisations, or clearance records

3) Publication records, timestamp, authoriser, approver, and upload pathway

Please provide the publication metadata for the 8 July letter, including:

• the time and date it was uploaded or published 
• the authoriser and or approver recorded in the system, and the role or team they belonged to where held
• any audit trail, workflow log, or upload pathway recorded in the gov.scot publishing system

4) Records explaining timing of publication

Please provide any recorded information within scope that discusses, proposes, or decides the timing of publication of the 8 July letter, including internal communications or communications planning documents where held.

Search locations

Please search the Office of the National Clinical Director, and any relevant staff within the Chief Medical Officer Directorate and Communications Directorate.

Disclosure

Please provide the information electronically. If any information is withheld, please cite the specific FOISA exemption for each redaction, and provide the remainder in redacted form. If any information is not held, please confirm this explicitly under section 17.”

Response

I enclose a copy of most of the information you requested in Annexes A and B. While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance we are unable to provide some of the information you have requested because exemptions under sections 38(1)(b), 30(b)(i) and 30(c) of FOISA applies to that information. The reasons why those exemptions apply to the information requested are explained in the Annexes.

For ease of clarity, please note the following:

Annex A – includes information relating to requests one and three.

Annex B – includes information relating to requests two and four. However, given the fast-paced environment in which discussions were occurring, both requests were mostly discussed in the same emails and it would not have been pragmatic to split the chains. I should also note that there were instances when the subject of the emails were not within scope of your request and these have been clearly marked as such.

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 202500498292 - Information Released - Annex A and Annex B

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1.2 MB