Communications regarding publication of updated independence prospectus papers: FOI Appeal

Information requested

Original request - 202200309607

1) In an essay for The National, the First Minister states "we will shortly begin publishing an updated prospectus on the opportunities that independence can offer Scotland". Please provide the publication timetable for this prospectus.

Response

I am writing to you in connection with the decision from the Scottish Information Commissioner Ref: 220/2024, to disclose information as required. This decision comes from a request made to the Scottish Government under FOISA on 22 May 2022 for a review of the following:

1) In an essay for The National, the First Minister states "we will shortly begin publishing an updated prospectus on the opportunities that independence can offer Scotland". Please provide the publication timetable for this prospectus.

Our response

Please find enclosed timetable in Annex A, providing the information that we are required to disclose as a result of the Scottish Information Commissioner’s decision 220/2024.

The timetable provided represents information which was held by the Scottish Government at 22 May 2022, in connection with the commitment in the 2021- 22 Programme for Government on the development of a prospectus for an independent Scotland, to be known as the Building a New Scotland (BANS) series.

Per the Commissioner’s decision, information regarding the planned titles of the ‘Building A New Scotland’ (BANS) series had been incorrectly withheld under section 29(1)(a) and these titles should be released.

Per the Commissioner’s decision, information regarding the planned publication dates of the BANS series had been correctly withheld using section 30( c ).

Since the content of the document does not reflect final decisions taken, the proposed titles and number of publications in the draft timetable for document 1 are not a representation of the published BANS papers. You may find it helpful to note that some of the proposed titles set out in the document have since been merged into fewer papers with a wider topic scope. All published BANS papers can be found at:

(Building a new Scotland - gov.scot (www.gov.scot)

About FOI

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FOI 202200301428 - Information Released - Annex

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