Bus Partnership Fund communications: EIR release

Information requested

All communications between Government Ministers and officials regarding the decision to ‘pause’ the bus partnership fund.

All communications between Government Ministers and officials regarding the decision to make the bus partnership fund amount to £500 million.

All communications between Government Ministers and officials regarding the financial feasibility of the bus partnership fund.

All communications between Government Ministers and officials regarding the creation of the bus partnership fund.

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 exemption 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 exemption 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 exemption. We have found that, on balance, the public interest lies in favour of upholding the exemption, 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.

In relation to question 2, please note that the long-term investment of over £500 million was for bus priority infrastructure to tackle the negative impacts of congestion on bus services. The Bus Partnership was only one of the ways in which this will be delivered. Therefore while there was no decision to make the Bus Partnership Fund amount £500 million this response does include any relevant information regarding the decision to make the £500 million commitment for bus priority infrastructure where it includes reference to the Bus Partnership Fund.

I enclose a copy of some of the information you requested in response to your questions in Annex A. However, the exception under regulation 11(2) of the EIRs (personal information) and regulation 10(4)(e) of the EIRs (internal communications) have been applied.

Regulation 11(2) of the EIRs (personal information)

An exception under regulation 11(2) of the EIRs (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 exception 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 exception.

Regulation 10(4)(e) of the EIRs (internal communications)

An exception under regulation 10(4)(e) of the EIRs (internal communications) applies to some of the information requested because it is internal communication between Transport Scotland /Scottish Government officials and Scottish Ministers. The reasons why that exception applies are explained below.

This exception is subject to the ‘public interest test’. This means we have taken account of all the circumstances of the case and considered whether, on balance, disclosing the information is outweighed by the public good to be had by applying the exception. We have found that, on balance, the public interest lies in favour of applying the exception and I have outlined the (specific) reasons for this below.

We do recognise that there is some public interest in releasing this information as part of open, transparent and accountable government, and to inform public debate. However, this is outweighed by the ability for Scottish Government, its Ministers and officials to be able to discuss, debate and deliver high quality policy including the decision-making processes in a private thinking space and ensuring it can be conducted in an environment which does not hamper this process. In order to do so they must be able to properly discuss, debate and exchange views on how implementing policy will be undertaken and part of this is the development of briefing material, the deliberations that have taken place and the decisions made. Ministers and officials need to be able to consider all available options and to debate those rigorously, to fully understand their possible implications.

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 - 202400413823 - Information released - Annex A

File type

24 page PDF

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461.1 kB