Cost of travel and accommodation for the First Minister’s visit to Germany: FOI release

Information requested

1. Total cost of travel and accommodation for the full duration of FM’s visit to Germany over the weekend of Friday 14 June.

2. Correspondence between private office and officials around the visit planning, agenda etc.

3. Correspondence between private office, officials and stakeholders which FM met including invites and to confirm details.

4. Whether the former FM Humza Yousaf was scheduled to carry out the engagements or if they were set up after FM Swinney took over.

5. The number of SG officials who attended, including a breakdown of role descriptions (eg private secretary, photographer).

Response

(1)
The First Minister travelled to Germany on official business and was supported by a team of Officials and a Special Adviser. Please find a breakdown of the costs of the visit below:

Travel (flights/trains): £7,324.17

Accommodation: £3,657.49 

Ground transport: £1,007.46

Subsistence/incremental expenses (inc food and non-alcoholic drinks): £425.96

Total: £12,415.08

An exemption under section 39(1) of FOISA (health & safety) applies to some of the information you have requested. The Scottish Government does not provide information in relation to the First Minister’s security matters. This is because disclosure would, or would be likely to, endanger the physical or mental health or safety of an individual. 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. We recognise that there is some public interest in the arrangements for the First Minister’s travel, however, this is outweighed by the public interest in the safety of the First Minister.
The Scottish Government routinely publishes information on Ministerial travel. This can be viewed via:

https://www.gov.scot/collections/ministerial-engagements-travel-and-gifts

(2) + (3)
While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance the costs of locating, retrieving and providing the information requested would exceed the upper cost limit of £600. The reason for this is that to locate and retrieve that information we would need to conduct a search of all of the records of the Scottish Government. It may help if I explain that we file our information according to the subject matter, not by reference to names of individuals/organisations with whom we have corresponded. Your request generated a search result of over 1000 emails and over 1200 potential items from the Scottish Government central filing system.

Under section 12 of FOISA public authorities are not required to comply with a request for information if the authority estimates that the cost of complying would exceed the upper cost limit, which is currently set at £600 by Regulations made under section 12.

You may, however, wish to consider reducing the scope of your request in order that the costs can be brought below £600. For example, you could specify the subject matter relates to a specific engagement or visit, as this would allow us to limit the searches that would require to be conducted. You may also find it helpful to look at the Scottish Information Commissioner’s ‘Tips for requesting information under FOI and the EIRs’ on his website at: https://www.itspublicknowledge.info/how-do-i-ask.

(4)
The former First Minister, Humza Yousaf MSP, was scheduled to carry out the engagements.

(5)
The First Minister was supported by five Officials and one Special Advisor. Role descriptions as follows: C1 Private Secretary, C2 Policy Officer, C1 Policy Officer, B2 Visits & Events Officer, B2 Communications Officer, and a Special Adviser.

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