Information regarding ministerial responsibility for determining energy consents: EIR release

Information requested

Please provide the following information in relation to the transfer of responsibility for Electricity Act 1989 consents to the Minister for Public Finance on 18 December 2025:

Decision-making

• The date the decision to transfer responsibility was taken.
• The person(s) or office(s) that made the decision.
• Any ministerial submission(s), briefing(s), minute(s) of meetings, or other record(s) that set out the rationale for the transfer.

Legal advice

Whether legal advice was sought or obtained in advance of the transfer, and if so:

• the date(s) on which advice was requested and provided,
• whether the advice was provided internally (e.g. Scottish Government Legal Directorate) or externally (e.g. counsel/external solicitors),
• the identity of any external provider(s) (organisation name only is sufficient).

Please note: I am not requesting the content of any legally privileged advice, only the existence and basic administrative details listed above.

Handling of parliamentary question S6W-43127

• Any internal guidance, correspondence, or record(s) explaining why the answer to written parliamentary question S6W-43127 (answered on 27 January 2026) did not state whether legal advice was sought, and instead responded that the allocation of ministerial portfolios and responsibilities is a matter for the First Minister.
• Any record(s) of the decision on which minister would answer S6W-43127

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.

Please find enclosed a copy of most of the information you requested, entitled Annex A.

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 the following exceptions apply:

• Regulation 6(1)(b) of the EIRs (information already publicly available)
• Regulation 10(4)(a) of the EIRs (information not held)
• Regulation 10(4)(e) of the EIRs (Internal communication)
• Regulation 11(2) of the EIRs (Personal information)

Under regulation 6(1)(b) of the EIRs (information already publicly available), we do not have to provide you information which is already publicly available. Information about the date and persons who made the decision to change ministerial responsibility for determining energy consents was published on 3 February 2026 in the answer to a parliamentary question (S6W-43259): Written question and answer: S6W-43259 | Scottish Parliament Website

Ministerial portfolio allocations are decided by the First Minister, who has responsibility for assigning and adjusting ministerial duties. Further information on the First Minister’s role is available here: First Minister - gov.scot

This type of transfer is generally an internal machinery‑of‑government adjustment rather than a change to the statutory basis of the consenting powers. Under the Electricity Act 1989, these functions are already conferred on ‘the Scottish Ministers’ collectively, and reallocating responsibility between individual Ministers is ordinarily an operational portfolio decision rather than a legal alteration
of the powers themselves.

Under the terms of the exception at regulation 10(4)(a) of the EIRs (information not held), the Scottish Government is not required to provide information which it does not have. Our searches have also not identified any correspondence indicating that legal advice was sought or obtained in advance of the transfer of responsibility for Electricity Act 1989 consents to the Minister for Public Finance on 18 December 2025.

This exception 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 exception. We have found that, on balance, the public interest lies in favour of upholding the exception. While we recognise that there may be some public interest in this information, but clearly, we cannot provide information which we do not hold.

An exception under regulation 10(4)(e) of the EIRs (internal communication) applies to some of the information requested. This exception 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 exception. We have found that, on balance, the public interest lies in favour of upholding the exception.

An exception under regulation 11(2) of the EIRs (personal information) applies to some of the information requested because it is personal data of a third party 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 exception 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 exception.

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 202600503900 - Information Released - Annex A

File type

PDF

File size

1.9 MB