Former Health Secretary's resignation and the Former Deputy First Minister's attendance at tax advisory meeting: FOI release

Information requested

1. All correspondence received and sent by the Scottish Government, including internal correspondence, briefings and notes, about Michael Matheson's resignation, and whether he will take his severance payment, between February 5 2024 and March 5 2024.

2. The reason behind Shona Robison missing the Scottish Government tax advisory meeting on January 11.

Response

Information in response to your first question is attached.

Some of the information you have requested is available from the Scottish Government website. Under section 25(1) of FOISA, we do not have to provide you with information if it is already reasonably accessible to you.

An exemption applies under section 38(1)(b) of FOISA (personal information) to a small amount of the information requested because it is personal data of a third party, i.e names and contact details of individuals, 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 2028.

These exemptions are 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 exemptions.

Ministerial severance payments are administered by the Scottish Parliament, which acts as the employer in these instances. Any enquiries on this would be a matter for them and should be directed to: info@parliament.scot.

In relation to your second question, members of the Tax Advisory Group have agreed to meet periodically with officials between formal quarterly Deputy First Minister Chaired meetings. On this occasion it was an official-led discussion with members on the Group’s terms of reference.

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 202400404652 - Information released - Annex

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