Correspondence between Scottish Government (SG) and Scotonomics podcast or Scotonomics Live festival: EIR release

Information requested

Copies of all email correspondence between the Scottish Government (including Ministers, Civil Servants, Special Advisers, and Press Officers) and anyone representing the Scotonomics podcast or Scotonomics Live festival, 1st February 2023 - date.

When asked to clarify further, you asked for:

“The correspondence I am seeking would be between William Thomson and/or Kairin van Sweeden, both of Scotonomics, and three individuals (or their offices) in the Scottish Government:

(1.) Gary Gillespie, Chief Economist

(2.) Màiri McAllan

(3.) Gillian Martin”

Response

As the information you have requested is ‘environmental information’ for the purposes of the Environmental Information (Scotland) Regulations 2004 (EIRs), we are required to deal with your request under those Regulations. We are applying the exception at section 39(2) of the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 (FOISA), so that we do not also have to deal with your request under FOISA.

This exception is subject to the ‘public interest test’. Therefore, taking account of all the circumstances of this case, we have considered if the public interest in disclosing the information outweighs the public interest in applying the exception. We have found that, on balance, the public interest lies in favour of upholding the exception, because there is no public interest in dealing with the same request under two different regimes. This is essentially a technical point and has no material effect on the outcome of your request.

I have included copies of the information you have requested in Annex B.

On reviewing materials within the scope of your request, exceptions have been applied in line with the EIRs. The exceptions applied can be found in 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.

EIR 202400413339 - Information Released - Annex A and B

File type

20 page PDF

File size

426.1 kB