Former First Minister's speech on the constitution and independence: FOI release

Information requested

All correspondence received and sent by the Scottish Government, including internally, briefings written, notes and minutes held by the Government about Humza Yousaf's speech at Glasgow University on January 8, specifically about the parts on the constitution and independence, and feedback about this topic, between December 15 2023 and January 15 2024.

Response

A number of staff from across 5 different business areas of the Scottish Government were involved in the creation and delivery of this speech. The costs of locating, retrieving and providing every item of correspondence held by those involved in the speech relating to the former First Minister’s speech on 8 January 2024 created between 15 December 2023 – 15 January 2024 would exceed the upper cost limit of £600.

However, in an effort to provide information whenever possible, we have carried out the most proportionate searches that could be completed within the cost limit. As a result we have limited the search to material held by the two lead speech drafters.

With this narrowing of scope, some of the material you have requested can be found in Annex B.

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.

Exemptions under Section 30(b)(i), 30(b)(ii) and 30(c) apply to some of the information requested. The reason why these exemptions apply is explained in Annex A 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 202400413342 - Information released - Annex A and B

File type

42 page PDF

File size

869.0 kB