Publication - FOI/EIR release

National Farmers Union of Scotland and gene editing: EIR release

Published: 20 December 2023
Directorate: Agriculture and Rural Economy Directorate
Topic: Public sector
FOI reference: 202200280877
Date received: 15 February 2022
Date responded: 7 April 2022

Information request and response under the Environmental Information (Scotland) Regulations 2004.

Information requested

Correspondence (including emails, attachments, typed or handwritten notes, letters, notes/records of phone calls, minutes of meetings, briefings, WhatsApp messages or otherwise) between Cabinet Secretary Mairi Gougeon MSP, any other Scottish Government representatives and the National Farmers Union of Scotland, the Roslin Institute, the James Hutton Institute, the Scottish Agricultural Organisation Society, mentioning ‘Gene editing’ in the period 18 May 2021 to 14 February 2022.

Any correspondence (including emails, attachments, typed or handwritten notes, letters, notes/records of phone calls, minutes of meetings, briefings, WhatsApp messages or otherwise) within the Scottish Government mentioning ‘gene editing’ between 18 May 2021 to 14 February 2022.

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.

Under regulation 5(2)(a) of the EIRs, our response to your request was due on 15/03/2022. Unfortunately, dealing with your request took longer than expected. Please accept my apologies for this delay.

Response

I enclose a copy of some of the information you requested.

Some of the information you have requested is available from the following sources:

Under regulation 6(1)(b) of the EIRs, we do not have to give you information which is already publicly available and easily accessible to you in another form or format. If, however, you do not have internet access to obtain this information from the websites listed, then please contact me again and I will send you a paper copy.

While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance we are unable to provide some of the information you have requested due to the following reasons.

An exception under regulation 10(4)(e) (internal communications) of the EIRs applies to some of the information you have requested. This exception is required to allow for honest and frank discussion to exist within certain forums between the Scottish ministers and their counterparts across the other UK administrations.

Furthermore, an exception under regulation 10(4)(b) (manifestly unreasonable requests) of the EIRs applies to some of the information requested. In this case, due to the high volume of internal correspondence mentioning “gene editing”, the costs and resources involved in sourcing and preparing the information requested would be disproportionate to the gains provided by its release. For this reason, we consider that the second part of your request is manifestly unreasonable and so we are refusing it under regulation 10(4) (b).

These exceptions are 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. We recognise that there is some public interest in releasing information regarding “gene editing”, however this is outweighed by the public interest in ensuring the efficient and effective use of public resources by not incurring excessive costs when complying with information requests.

More information regarding these exemptions can be found on the Scottish Information Commissioner’s website.

However, we do believe the first part of your request to be reasonable and have provided the attached information to answer this.

If you wish to submit another request, you may find it helpful to look at the Scottish Information Commissioner’s ‘Tips for requesting information under FOI and the EIRs’ on their website.
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