Correspondence with Council of Economic Advisers: FOI release

FOI reference: FOI/18/02506  
Date received: 2 October 2018 
Date responded: 25 October 2018

 

 

Correspondence (emails, typed or handwritten notes, letters, phone calls, minutes of meetings or otherwise) between members of the Council of Economic Advisers and Scottish Government Ministers in 2018.
This was clarified as referring to Ministers working in their capacity as council members.

 

 

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

1. Extract from minutes taken at a meeting on 23 May 2018 concerning the Wellbeing Economy Governments network. In relation to the Inclusive Growth workstream of the Council of Economic Advisers.

2. Correspondence between the Office of the First Minister and Mariana Mazzucato in regards to event relating to Innovation workstream of the Council of Economic Advisers.

3. Letter from the First Minister to Frances Ruane – January 2018.

Some of the information you have requested is contained within the minutes from the Janaury 2018 meeting of the Council of Economic Advisers, which are available from the Scottish Government website at: /publications/council-of-economic-advisers-minutes-january-2018/. Under section 25(1) of FOISA, we do not have to give you information which is already reasonably accessible to you.

 

 

An exemption applies.

An exemption under section s.25(1) of FOISA (information otherwise accessible) applies to some of the information you have requested, namely the minutes of the Council of Economic Advisers meeting which took place in January 2018. These minutes are published and accessible on the Scottish Government website. 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.

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, ie names of individuals in the extract from minutes taken at a meeting on 23 May 2018 concerning the Wellbeing Economy Governments network and in the correspondence between the Office of the First Minister and Mariana Mazzucato in regards to event relating to Innovation workstream, 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.

 

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