Contracts and/or meetings with Make Yourself Heard: FOI release

FOI reference: FOI/17/02221
Date received: 2 October 2017
Date responded: 17 October 2017

Information requested

Information relating to any Scottish Government contracts with the company Make Yourself Heard, and also for information on any meetings between Ministers and representatives of Make Yourself Heard.

Response

To answer the first part of your request, we have interrogated the Scottish Government's finance system to identify any payments made to Make Yourself Heard by the Scottish Government.

Our records show a single payment of £400, made against an invoice dated 7th June 2017 for "voice and presence coaching" delivered to a Scottish Government official.

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 exemption under section 38(1)(b) (personal information) of FOISA applies to that information. The reason why this exemption applies are explained below.

With regards to the second part of your request, in this instance the Scottish Government does not have the information you have requested. The reason why we don't have the information is explained in the Annex to this letter.

Reasons for not providing information

The Scottish Government does not have the information.

The Scottish Government does not have the information you have asked for because we do not hold any records of meetings between Ministers and representatives of Make Yourself Heard.

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 applies.

An exemption under section 38(1)(b) of FOISA (personal information) applies to some of the information requested because it is personal data of a third party, i.e. the name of an individual, 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