Senior Civil Servant Staffing List and Register of Interests: FOI REVIEW

Information requested

Original request - 202100233415

"For each civil servant considered a Senior Civil Servant as of August 25, please provide the following information.

1a) Their name, job title, and period working for the government.

1b) Their recorded business interests and those of close family members.

1c) Any shareholdings or other securities/financial interests which they or members of their close family hold.

1d) Any other financial interest where there is the potential for a conflict of interest to arise as a result of your official position.

1e) Private interests in organisations where there could be the potential for a conflict of interest to arise, for example membership of clubs, societies and other organisations."

Response

Further to the acknowledgment of the receipt of your review request (202300360435), I have completed my review of the response to your request (202100233415) under the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 (FOISA).

"For each civil servant considered a Senior Civil Servant as of August 25, please provide the following information.

1a) Their name, job title, and period working for the government.

1b) Their recorded business interests and those of close family members.

1c) Any shareholdings or other securities/financial interests which they or members of their close family hold.

1d) Any other financial interest where there is the potential for a conflict of interest to arise as a result of your official position.

1e) Private interests in organisations where there could be the potential for a conflict of interest to arise, for example membership of clubs, societies and other organisations."

In your request for a review, you expressed dissatisfaction with the following aspects of our handling of your request, as follows:

1. The time taken to respond to your request; and
2. the redactions that we have applied, in particular that the approach taken appears inconsistent.

Our response:

In relation to the first part of your review request, I have carefully considered the time taken to respond to your request for information, and I would like to take this opportunity to apologise for the length of time taken to respond to your original request. The main factors for the delay were the large number of data subjects to which the information relates and the time required to carefully consider each piece of information to ensure any disclosure would comply with our obligations under data protection legislation. We should have explained this to you in our response to your original request and I regret that we did not do so.

In relation to the second part of your review request, I have considered the information released and have concluded that the original decision should be upheld subject to the following modifications:

• In the entries at rows 302, 303, 304, 305 and 427 “out of scope” should be substituted for “38(1)(b)”. This is because the material withheld does not hold information regarding interests.
• In the entry at row 429 “REDACTED s38(1)b] pension fund” should be substituted for “[REDACTED s38(1)b] shares ([REDACTED s38(1)b])”
• In the entry at row 431, REDACTED s38(1)b] ISA” should be substituted for “[REDACTED s38(1)b] shares ([REDACTED s38(1)b])”.

I also consider that the original decision should have set out more clearly the application of the exemption at section 38(1)(b). I have therefore set out our reasoning more fully below:

“While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance we are unable to provide some of the information you have requested because an exemption under section 38(1)(b) (personal information) applies to that information. Section 38(1)(b) applies because it is personal data of a third party, for example names of individuals or other personal data and disclosing it would contravene the data protection principles in Article 5(1) of the General Data Protection Regulation and in section 34(1) of the Data Protection Act 2018. This exemption is not subject to the ‘public interest test’, so we are not required to consider if the public interest test in disclosing the information outweighs the public interest in applying the exemption.”.

In relation to the part of your review request that expresses dissatisfaction in relation to the redactions made appearing inconsistent, it may help if I explain that a number of factors that were considered in relation to each piece of information and each entry was considered on a case-by-case basis.

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.