Information pertaining to Sam Eljamel: FOI Release

Information requested

You asked for:
“The Royal College of Surgeon's report on surgeon Sam Eljamel in 2013 stated: RCS said: “The bulk of [ELJAMEL’S] neurosurgical work was however comprised of degenerative spine cases, which [ELJAMEL] admitted [he] had attempted to give up in the past.”

Please send me all correspondence from Sam Eljamel expressing his desire to give up spinal surgery.

Please also send me all replies from NHS Tayside and/or Scottish Government staff responding to this request.

I acknowledge this is personal information, however a wealth of correspondence from NHS Tayside to and from Sam Eljamel has already been published demonstrating the overriding public interest test applied to this general exemption.”

Response

While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance the Scottish Government only holds some of information you have requested.

The information you have requested in relation to Professor Eljamel’s desire to give up degenerative spinal surgery is more likely to be held by NHS Tayside and I note from your email to the Scottish Government, you have also made the same request of NHS Tayside. This is a formal notice under section 17(1) of FOISA that the Scottish Government does not have the information you have requested.

You may be interested to know that the second part of your request relating to “replies responding to this request” is not a valid FOISA request. This is because, at the time your request was made, no information would have existed as any searches would not have been conducted prior to the Scottish Government receiving your request. However, on this occasion only, I have provided you with an annex which contains the emails which have been sent by Scottish Government staff responding to this request.

This is at Annex A.
 

 

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.

Annex A

File type

PDF

File size

91.6 kB