Communications between Cabinet Secretary and Russian Government: FOI release

FOI reference: FOI/17/01592
Date received: 11 July 2017
Date responded: 21 August 2017

Information requested

The following information:

• A breakdown of all communications between the Cabinet Secretary for the Economy, Jobs and Fair Work and the Russian Government since June 2016.

• All correspondence between the Cabinet Secretary for the Economy, Jobs and Fair Work and the Russian Government since June 2016.

• All minutes and notes taken of telephone communications between the Cabinet Secretary for the Economy, Jobs and Fair Work and the Russian Government since June 2016.

Response

Communications and correspondence

I enclose a copy of some of the information you requested. An exemption applying to this information is provided below. It should be noted that, despite the Cabinet Secretary's acceptance of the invitation in the reply of 16 August 2016, the Cabinet Secretary did not subsequently attend the event.

We can confirm that the only other correspondence or communications between the Cabinet Secretary for the Economy, Jobs and Fair Work and the Russian Government relates to the meeting of 15 March 2017 between the Cabinet Secretary and the Russian Consul General - Mr Andrey Pritsepov. All information allied to this meeting was provided to you on 13 July 2017 in response to your request of 20 June 2017 (under FOISA reference FoI/17/01373 - /publications/foi-17-01373/). No more information is held in relation to this part of your request.

Minutes and notes of telephone communications

While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance the Scottish Government does not have the information. The reasons why we don't have the information are explained below.

Reasons for not providing information

While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance the Scottish Government does not have the information you have requested. We do not have the information because there are no records of any telephone communications between the Cabinet Secretary for the Economy, Jobs and Fair Work and the Russian Government since June 2016 and therefore no minutes or notes of any such telephone communications are held. This is a formal notice under section 17(1) of FOISA that the Scottish Government does not have the information you have requested.

An exemption under section 38(1)(b) of FOISA (personal information) applies to a small amount of the information requested because it is personal data of a third party, i.e. names/contact details of individuals, and disclosing it would contravene the data protection principles in Schedule 1 to the Data Protection Act 1998. 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.

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

foi-17-01592 Correspondence between Cabinet Secretary and Russian Government.pdf

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6 page PDF

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