Secondary legislation for deer consultation June 2023: EIR release

Information requested

A copy of all responses received and a breakdown of whether those responses were for, against or neutral on the third question about the abolition of close seasons for male deer of all species in Scotland.

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.

I enclose a copy of the information you requested.
A small number of redactions have been made under regulation 11(2) of the EIRs (personal information).
This applies to the information where the information is considered personal data (in this case, names and job titles) 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 exception is not subject to the 'public interest test', so we are not required to consider if the public interest in disclosing the information outweighs the public interest in applying the exception.

Furthermore, regulation 11(2) provides that where the information requested includes personal data about a person other than the applicant and disclosure would contravene the data protection principles in
Schedule 1 to the Data Protection Act 1998, the public authority shall not make that personal data available. In this instance, we consider that to reveal whether the information you have requested exists or
is held by the Scottish Government would involve making personal information available about employees of the Scottish Government and individuals who have corresponded with the Scottish Government.

No documents have been withheld to protect this information, but any identifying details have been removed from the documents.

 

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 202300367776 - Information released

File type

29 page PDF

File size

1.7 MB