Scottish Government overseas offices: FOI release

Information requested

Information on Scottish Government overseas office and in particular:

1. "Can you advise on what dates each of the above open by year format, and what has been the level of financial investment in Scotland by each of the offices activities again by format?
2. And by location, what if any, have there been any visits to these overseas offices by MSP’s by year format, please list by year?
3. And to date, what has been the total cost of having these offices to the Scottish taxpayer?"

Response

Most of the information you have requested is available from a FOI response that has already been published. Link attached for ease of reference. Scottish Government overseas office statistics: FOI release - gov.scot (www.gov.scot) Under section 25(1) of FOISA, we do not have to give you information which is already reasonably accessible to you. If, however, you do not have internet access to obtain this information from the website(s) listed, then please contact me again and I will send you a paper copy.

There have been no further visits by MSPS to our international offices overseas since the last FOI request in the link above.

I have updated the financial table to include the budget for Financial Year 2023/2024 as below.

	Opened	2016-17	2017-18	2018-19	2019-20	2020-21	2021-22	2022-23	2023-24
		000s	000s	000s	000s	000s	000s	000s	000s
Beijing, China	2005	395	395	395	553	554	550	567	482
Washington DC, United States	2001	700	700	700	807	811	805	794	782
Ottawa, Canada	2018			500	575	575	570	634	600
Paris, France	2018			500	545	558	556	659	673
Dublin, Ireland	2016			350	541	572	596	593	547
Berlin, Germany	2018			300	549	549	555	572	591
Brussels, Belgium	1999		1,139	1,639	2,079	2,088	2,310	2,467	2,441
London, England	2017			1,650	1,995	2,041	2,197	2,180	2,157
Copenhagen, Denmark	2022							598	693

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.