Meeting minutes between government ministers and Sir Brian Souter: FOI release

Information requested

1. The minutes of any meetings that have taken place between government ministers and Sir Brian Souter from 2019 to date.
2. The minutes of any meetings that have taken place between government special advisers and Brian Souter since 2019.
3. Email correspondence between the Scottish government (including ministers, officials or special advisers) and Mr Souter, or anyone on his behalf, since March 2023.

Response

Question (1)

I enclose a copy of most the information you requested as an attachment. While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, we are unable to provide some of the information you have requested because exemptions under section 38(1)(b) of FOISA apply to that information. The reasons why these exemptions apply are explained below.

Question (2)

While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance the Scottish Government does not have the information you have requested. This is because there has been no such meetings.

This is a formal notice under section 17(1) of FOISA that the Scottish Government does not have the information you have requested.

Question (3)

I enclose a copy of some of the information you requested as an attachment. Please note the attachment includes official correspondence stored on the Scottish Government correspondence system only.

While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, we are unable to provide some of the information you have requested because exemptions under section 38(1)(b) and section 12 of FOISA apply to that information. The reasons why these exemptions apply are explained below.

Reasons for not providing information

An exemption under section 38(1)(b) of FOISA (personal information) applies to some of the information requested because in questions (1) and (3) 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 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.

In relation to question (3), the costs of locating, retrieving and providing all of 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. 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, however, wish to consider reducing the scope of your request in order that the costs can be brought below £600. For example, you could specify the subject matter(s) 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 http://www.gov.scot/foi-responses.

202300357465_FOI_for_release

File type

4 page PDF

File size

129.6 kB