The Agriculture Reform Implementation Oversight Board (ARIOB): EIR release

Information requested

1. When did the Agriculture Reform Implementation Oversight Board last meet;

2. The expected publication date of the Agriculture Reform Implementation Oversight Board’s report / findings;

3. The expected publication date of the Agriculture Reform Implementation Oversight Board’s publication of its interim progress or a report on its interim progress;

4. Internal and external Correspondence received by members of the Agriculture Reform Implementation Oversight Board regarding ‘fertiliser prices’, ‘the war in Ukraine’, ‘the Russian invasion of Ukraine’ and ‘fuel costs’.

Response

As the information you have requested is ‘environmental information’ for the purposes of the Environmental Information (Scotland) Regulations 2004 (EIRs), we are required to deal with your request under those Regulations. We are applying the exemption at section 39(2) of the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 (FOISA), so that we do not also have to deal with your request under FOISA.

This exemption is subject to the ‘public interest test’. Therefore, taking account of all the circumstances of this case, we have considered if the public interest in disclosing the information outweighs the public interest in applying the exemption. We have found that, on balance, the public interest lies in favour of upholding the exemption, because there is no public interest in dealing with the same request under two different regimes. This is essentially a technical point and has no material effect on the outcome of your request.

1. The Agriculture Reform Implementation Oversight Board (ARIOB) last met on Wednesday 24 August 2022.

2. The ARIOB acts in an advisory capacity to the Scottish Government and has no current plans to formally report.

3. As above, the ARIOB has no current plans to formally report. However, the minutes from ARIOB meetings are published online (https://www.gov.scot/groups/agriculture-reform-implementationoversight-board/), along with Board’s Terms of Reference.

4. Following searches of internal and external correspondence received by members of the ARIOB, none of the above terms were found.

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

Annex
The Scottish Government does not have the information

Under the terms of the exception at regulation 10(4)(a) of the EIRs (information not held), the Scottish Government is not required to provide information which it does not have. The Scottish Government does not have the information you have requested because when carrying out a search by using the terms you are interested in on correspondence received by members of the ARIO Board, no information was found.

This exception is subject to the ‘public interest test’. Therefore, taking account of all the circumstances of this case, we have considered if the public interest in disclosing the information outweighs the public interest in applying the exception. We have found that, on balance, the public interest lies in favour of upholding the exception. While we recognise that there may be some public interest in information about correspondence received by the ARIOB with regards those topics, clearly we cannot provide information which we do not hold.

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.