Sums paid to Ferguson Marine Engineering Limited: FOI Review

Information requested

Original request 202300369280

Can you please stipulate all sums paid to date to Ferguson Marine Engineering Limited and Ferguson Marine (Port Glasgow) Limited since September 6, 2017, when a commercial loan facility of £6m was given by the Directorate for Economic Development.

Can you state firstly who the payee was, what the amount paid was, the date it was paid, the description of the payment, including, for example, whether it related to a commercial loan facility, a grant-in-aid to NDPB, a working capital payment, or capital payment to Ferguson for the build of vessels 801 and 802. Can you also state clearly who made the payment, whether it be, for instance, the Economic Development directorate, the Economic Policy directorate or the Covid Business Resilience and Support Directorate, or whatever the source was.

Can you also explain what grant-in-aid to NDPB means and any other jargon that might be used.

Response

Your Request:

Can you please stipulate all sums paid to date to Ferguson Marine Engineering Limited and Ferguson Marine (Port Glasgow) Limited since September 6, 2017, when a commercial loan facility of £6m was given by the Directorate for Economic Development.

Can you state firstly who the payee was, what the amount paid was, the date it was paid, the description of the payment, including, for example, whether it related to a commercial loan facility, a grant-in-aid to NDPB, a working capital payment, or capital payment to Ferguson for the build of vessels 801 and 802. Can you also state clearly who made the payment, whether it be, for instance, the Economic Development directorate, the Economic Policy directorate or the Covid Business Resilience and Support Directorate, or whatever the source was.

Can you also explain what grant-in-aid to NDPB means and any other jargon that might be used.

Your review request

“I would seek a review of this response. You once again used the '12 week' publication exemption in relation to this request. But to date there has been no information regarding this and it is now SIX months down the line. This is not the first time that this has happened. I am copying this to the Information Commissioner, as there have been previous instances where this has happened and it has been investigating related matters.”

Response to your review request

It may be helpful to note that under section 20(5) of FOISA the requirement for a review must be made by the fortieth working day after the date we complied with your initial request (29 August 2023). However, in this case, I consider it is appropriate under section 20(6) of FOISA to comply with your review request made after this time period. You may however wish to note that in considering your request afresh, I can only consider the information which was held by the Scottish Government up to and including 31 July 2023 as this was the date of your initial request. Should you wish to receive more recent information, you would need to submit a further request to cover the period from 1 August 2023 to present.

I have been asked to look at the request afresh. I have concluded that the original decision should be substituted as follows:

Our original response stated “An exemption under section 27(1) of FOISA applies to some of the information requested because we intend to publish that information in the Autumn of this year and within 12 weeks of the date of your request. We consider that it is reasonable to withhold the information until that date, rather than release all of this information before the planned publication date.”

As you are aware, a policy of proactive publication has since been enacted, and a range of documentation has been published. We did not, however, publish the information that you requested within the prescribed timeframe, and we apologise for this. This is due to the complexity of the information and the change in systems over the years which mean that the data was not aligned to your request.

I have therefore concluded that a different decision should be substituted. Whilst we applied an exemption under section 27(1) in good faith, it is a matter of fact that we did not publish the information you requested within 12 weeks of your request. I have therefore determined that we were not entitled to refuse your request under section 27(1) of FOISA.

Please find attached a copy of the information that you have requested. I have listed all payments to Ferguson Marine Engineering Limited and Ferguson Marine (Port Glasgow) from this information and organised it so that it meets the criteria of your initial question.

You may also find it helpful to note that the Scottish Government has a proactive publication scheme in place which publishes all expenditure over £25,000. This can be accessed here: Government spend over £25,000: monthly reports - gov.scot (www.gov.scot).

You also asked us to explain what grant-in-aid to NDPB means and any other jargon that might be used. The Scottish Public Finance Manual has explanations for various terms used for financial transactions: Glossary - Scottish Public Finance Manual - 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.

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 202400403715 - Information released - Annex

File type

Excel document

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15.1 kB