Culture in an Independent Scotland white paper correspondence: FOI release

Information requested

Can you please disclose emails, and WhatsApps, sent between Scottish Government ministers and Scottish Government officials regarding the independence white paper entitled, 'Culture in an independent Scotland' sent/received on the following dates -

• February 2, 2024
• February 3, 2024
• February 4, 2024
• February 5, 2024
• February 6, 2024

Response

Searches were conducted across the email records of Ministerial offices and of certain Scottish Government officials, who would be most likely to hold relevant information, along with searches of the Scottish Government’s internal system for records management. Various items of information were identified as a result of these searches, some of which are enclosed in Annex A.

We narrowed the searches of email records to key individuals as in order to fully comply with your request, we would have had 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.

An exemption under section 38(1)(b) of FOISA (Personal Information) applies to some of the information requested 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 25(1) of FOISA applies to some of material you have requested. Under section 25(1) of FOISA, we do not have to give you information which is already reasonably accessible to you.

An exemption under Section 29(1)(b), 30(b)(i) and 30(c) applies to some of the information requested. The reason why these exemptions apply is explained in Annex B of this letter.

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 202400406120 - Information Released - Annex

File type

48 page PDF

File size

2.6 MB