Engagements between Ministers with David Tydeman and Alistair MacKenzie: FOI review

Information requested

All internal and external correspondence within and sent or received by the Scottish Government including attached documents, meeting handouts, memos, briefings to ministers, attendee lists, location of meeting, notes, minutes, or OneNote memos, linked to the following meetings:

• Ivan McKee's meeting with David Tydeman on 29/04/2022
• Kate Forbes' meeting with David Tydeman on 14/03/2022
• Kate Forbes' meeting with David Tydeman on 21/03/2022
• Kate Forbes' meeting with David Tydeman on 28/03/2022
• Kate Forbes' meeting with David Tydeman and Alistair Mackenzie on 06/04/2022

Response

I have concluded that the original decision should be confirmed, with modifications. As indicated in the original response to your request, our aim is to provide information whenever possible. However, on further consideration of the public interest in disclosing the information, alongside the public interest in upholding the exemption, I have found that on balance, the public interest lies in favour of upholding some of the exemption because of commercial sensitivities of future options for Ferguson Marine Port Glasgow. However, I have also concluded that some of the ongoing work at Ferguson Marine Port Glasgow is known about, or indeed this information is in the public domain, such as the procurement of Commercial Advisers for the Pathway to Productivity Assessment. I therefore have included this information as part of the review.

In relation to the documents that were released as part of the initial request, my comments in relation to what additional information has been released is as follows:

• It is standard practice that names within Scottish Government email addresses are redacted however the '@gov.scot' should be displayed so requestors are aware of the origon of where an email has been issued from and the recipient organisation, including those who have been copied into the email. I have therefore taken the decision in document 1a to release this information which was previously redacted under Section 38(1)(b).
• After reviewing the entirety of Document 1ei, I conclude that some additional information should be released which was redacted under section 33(1)(b) and 30(b)(i). This relates specifically to the sections; Efficiency and Capital Investment and Financial Assurance work.
• After reviewing document 1eii, I conclude that part of the document that had been redacted should be released as the exception did not apply to the full paragraph in the original response to you.

As advised in the initial response to you, and included at Annex A of that response, exemptions still do apply to some of the documents, specifically under section 38(1)(b) (personal data of a third party), exemption under section 33(1)(b) of FOISA (commercial interests) and exemption under section 30(b)(i) of FOISA (free and frank provision of advice).

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.

FOI - 202200331849 - Information release

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11 page PDF

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