Correspondence relating to the Scottish Currency Group: FOI release

Information requested

Please provide copies of all email correspondence between the Scottish Government (including Ministers, Civil Servants, Special Advisers, and Press Officers) and Tim Rideout, Robbie Mochrie, Ian Stewart, or Cathryn Jones (who are all representatives of the Scottish Currency Group), 1st January 2023 - date.

Response

Searches were conducted across the email records of all Scottish Government Ministers and Special Advisers, along with the Scottish Government’s internal systems for records management and correspondence. Various items of information were identified from these searches and are enclosed in Annex A.

An exemption under section 38(1)(b) (Personal Information) of FOISA applies to some of the information requested. This is because it is personal data of a third party, 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 in disclosing the information outweighs the public interest in applying the exemption.

An exemption under Section 30(b)(ii) applies to some of the information requested. The reason why this exemption applies is explained in Annex B of this letter.

In order to fully comply with your request however, we would have to conduct searches across the email records of every Scottish Government civil servant, which would not be possible to do within the upper cost limit of £600. Under Section 12 of FOISA public authorities are not required to comply with a request for information if the authority estimates that the cost of complying would exceed the upper cost limit, which is currently set at £600 by Regulations made under section 12.

You may, however, wish to consider reducing the scope of your request in order that the costs can be brought below £600. For example, you could restrict your request to a specific business area of the Scottish Government as this would allow us to limit the searches that would require to be conducted. You may also find it helpful to look at the Scottish Information Commissioner’s ‘Tips for requesting information under FOI and the EIRs’ at:

http://www.itspublicknowledge.info/YourRights/Tipsforrequesters.aspx.

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 - 202300387857 - Information released - Annex A & Annex B

File type

24 page PDF

File size

442.3 kB