UK Farm to Fork Summit: EIR release

Information requested

1. did the Scottish Government get invited to the UK Farm to Fork Summit on 16 May at Downing Street?
2. If so, who did they send?
3. Were any government ministers invited?
4. If so, did they attend and if not what was the excuse?
5. And for all correspondence between the UK Government and Scottish Government about the Farm to Fork summit, including any invites sent between January 2023 and the date.

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.

Response

The answer to your questions are: 

1 and 2 - The Director of Agriculture and Rural Economy was invited and attended. 

3 and 4 - You can find this information in the following link at the Scottish Government website Scottish Ministers call for meaningful engagement from UK Government on issues of food security - gov.scot (www.gov.scot) 

5 - I enclose a copy of the information you have requested. 

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 an exception(s) under regulation(s) Reg 11(2) (Personal data relating to third party) of the EIRs applies to that information. The reasons why that exception(s) applies are explained in the Annex to this letter. 

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.

01_03_202300361365

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