Documentation mentioning Irvine Welsh and Scottish Fiscal Commission: FOI release

Information requested

Could you supply all documentation held by the Scottish Government, including correspondence sent and received (including internal), minutes/notes from meetings, briefings, analysis, which is to/from or mentions Irvine Welsh from the last three months?

Could you supply all documentation held by the Scottish Government, including correspondence sent and received (including internal), minutes/notes from meetings, briefings, analysis, which is to/from or mentions the Scottish Fiscal Commission from the last month?

Response

Could you supply all documentation held by the Scottish Government, including correspondence sent and received (including internal), minutes/notes from meetings, briefings, analysis, which is to/from or mentions Irvine Welsh, from the last three months?

We have understood this period to be 17 September to 16 December 2025.

Could you supply all documentation held by the Scottish Government, including correspondence sent and received (including internal), minutes/notes from meetings, briefings, analysis, which is to/from or mentions, the Scottish Fiscal Commission, from the last month?

We have understood this period to be 17 November to 16 December 2025.

The other requests included in your email will be responded to by other areas of the Scottish Government.

The responses are set out in the annexes below.

Annex A

Your request

Could you supply all documentation held by the Scottish Government, including correspondence sent and received (including internal), minutes/notes from meetings, briefings, analysis, which is to/from or mentions Irvine Welsh, from the last three months?

Response to your request

I enclose a copy of some of the information you requested in annexes C & D.

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 section s.38(1)(b) (personal information) of
FOISA apply to that information. The reasons why this exemption applies is explained below.

Section 38(1)(b) – Personal Data

An exemption under section 38(1)(b) of FOISA (personal information) applies to some of the information requested because it is personal data of a third party, i.e. names and contact details, 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.

Annex B

Your request

Could you supply all documentation held by the Scottish Government, including correspondence sent and received (including internal), minutes/notes from meetings, briefings, analysis, which is to/from or mentions,
the Scottish Fiscal Commission, from the last month?

Response to your request

While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance the costs of locating, retrieving and providing the information requested would exceed the upper cost limit of £600. The reason for this is that to locate and retrieve that information we would need to conduct a search of all of the records of the Scottish Government. Given the wide scope of your request, there were over a thousand documents requiring review to determine which would potentially fall under your request. It is estimated that reviewing these documents would considerably exceed the upper cost limit of £600. Under Section 12 of FOISA public authorities are not required to comply with a request for information if the authority estimates that the cost of complying would exceed the upper cost limit, which is currently set at £600 by Regulations made under section 12.

You may wish to consider reducing the scope of your request in order that the costs can be brought below £600. For example, if you could narrow the timeframe further it may allow us to provide you with information you are interested in, or restrict your request to a specific business area of the Scottish Government, as this would allow us to limit the searches that would require to be conducted.

You may also find it helpful to look at the Scottish Information Commissioner's 'Tips for requesting information under FOI and the EIRs' on his website at:

http://www.itspublicknowledge.info/YourRights/Tipsforrequesters.aspx.

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 202500498587 - Information Released - Annex C and Annex D

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