Details of Scottish Government official presence at the COP26 conference: FOI Review

Information requested

1) What are the plans for the Scottish Government's official presence at the COP26? By this I mean the location, duration, and physical staff presence?
2) Please provide the overall financial cost of the Scottish Government's official presence at COP26.
2a) This should include the cost of hiring any venue as part of the official presence as the Scottish Government initially did with the Glasgow Science Centre.
2b) Please break this down by expense type, this should include but not be limited to accommodation costs, venue hire, food and drink provision, AV provision, or any other expense linked to the Scottish Government's official presence at COP26.
3) Can you confirm whether this cost will be covered by the UK Government's Cabinet Office as per the terms of the memorandum of understanding between the Scottish Government and the Cabinet Office, or whether this will come from the Scottish Government's budget and not be reimbursed?

Response

I have concluded that the original decision should be upheld, with modifications. Please accept my apologies for the delay in responding which is due to resource constraints and workload pressures.

Responses to your questions:

1) In the course of my review I found that relevant information held at the time in respect of plans should have been released to you. The information you asked for is as follows:

Planned Staff Attendance at COP26
The following tables detail the number of Scottish Government staff who were scheduled to cover shifts across the various venues we controlled during COP26. You should note that a shift pattern was in place, to allow us to manage and facilitate busy days and ensure staff had adequate breaks and travel time. This means that the numbers provided below are head count for the day, not individuals on shift at any given time.

Pre COP Planning Period

	18-Oct	19-Oct	20-Oct	21-Oct	22-Oct	23-Oct	24-Oct	25-Oct	26-Oct	27-Oct	28-Oct	29-Oct	30-Oct	31-Oct
SGCC	4	4	4	4	4	4	4	4	4	4	4	4	4	5
Lighthouse	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	3
Edinburgh Castle	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
Stirling Castle	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
Atlantic Quay	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
Blue Zone	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	3
Total	4	4	4	4	4	4	4	4	4	4	4	4	4	11

COP Fortnight

	01-Nov	02-Nov	03-Nov	04-Nov	05-Nov	06-Nov	07-Nov	08-Nov	09-Nov	10-Nov	11-Nov	12-Nov
SGCC	4	5	5	5	5	5	2	5	5	5	5	5
Lighthouse	5	5	5	5	5	5	0	6	5	4	4	1
Edinburgh Castle	0	0	2	0	0	0	2	0	0	2	0	0
Stirling Castle	0	0	0	0	0	2	0	0	0	0	0	0
Atlantic Quay	2	3	3	3	3	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
Blue Zone	4	4	4	4	4	4	0	3	4	3	3	4
Total	15	17	19	17	17	16	4	14	14	14	12	10

Post COP Wash Up Period

	13-Nov	14-Nov	15-Nov	16-Nov	17-Nov	18- Nov
SGCC	3	3	3	3	3	3
Lighthouse	0	0	0	0	0	0
Edinburgh Castle	0	0	0	0	0	0
Stirling Castle	0	0	0	0	0	0
Atlantic Quay	0	0	0	0	0	0
Blue Zone	0	0	0	0	0	0
Total	3	3	3	3	3	3

Planned Ministerial Attendance at COP26 Events

The information below provides the number of planned Ministerial events over the COP fortnight, along with the number of individual Ministers who were planned to present, attend or take part in these events. Unfortunately our People and Logistics team have not yet been able to publish the confirmed Ministerial events break down for November due to recent staff absences. However, they have advised that this will be published as soon as possible. You will be able to find that information at the following link when it is published.
Ministerial engagements, travel and gifts - gov.scot (www.gov.scot)

	01 Nov	02 Nov	03 Nov	04 Nov	05 Nov	06 Nov	07 Nov	08 Nov	09 Nov	10 Nov	11 Nov	12 Nov
Ministerial Events Planned	34	34	44	46	41	30	28	48	57	54	49	19
No. of Ministers involved	10	10	13	13	12	11	12	15	12	15	12	10

I apologise for not providing this information to you at the time, and I have fed back my review findings to the case handler.

2) a) & b) In the course of my review I found that the overall financial cost you asked for was not known at the time, and so could not have been released to you. Therefore, I am upholding the application of s17(1) (information not held) in relation to our original response to parts 2(a) and (b) of your request. Although it was not made explicit in the original response, where a response to part 2) in its entirety was given along with a response to part 1), the notification under s17(1) did apply to part 2 in full. I understand that you believe that some information on costs would have been held, but your request asked for the total cost, which was not known at the time your request was made. However, It remains the Scottish Government's intention to proactively publish information relating to COP26 as soon as possible and we are currently working with Cabinet Office colleagues to finalise this. Once completed the information will be made available via the Scottish Government website under 'Publications'.

I am satisfied that question 3 was answered in our original response, i.e., “Scottish Government programme of events at COP26 will be covered by the Scottish Government’s budget and will not be reimbursed by the UK Government’s Cabinet Office”.

About FOI

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