Scottish independence briefing notes: FOI release
Information request and response under the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002.
Information requested
Any official briefing note to the First Minister and/or the Cabinet Secretary for the Constitution in the calendar year 2024, which includes the phrase "Scottish independence" and/or "referendum".
Response
Searches were conducted across the records relating to the Constitutional Futures Division for briefing notes which contain the terms “Scottish independence” and/or “referendum” in the calendar year 2024 up to 8 August. Items identified from these searches are enclosed in Annex A of this letter.
Exemptions under S.30(b)(ii), S.29(1)(a), S.30(c) and S.36(1) of FOISA apply to some of the information requested. The reason why these exemptions apply is explained in Annex B of this letter.
In order to fully comply with your request however, we would have to conduct searches across all Scottish Government records and every Scottish Government Civil Servant, which would not be possible to do within the upper cost limit of £600. The following explanation of why this is the case is provided, outwith FOISA, below.
Ministers regularly receive briefings on a wide range of topics, both within and outside of their respective portfolios. For example, a Minister could be meeting with an external stakeholder who wishes to discuss matters connected to their portfolio, but might also want to discuss a particular topic regarding Scottish independence, and briefing would be prepared by officials accordingly.
The Scottish Government does not have a centrally held record of each briefing it has prepared for each Minister, when this was done, and the topics included in that briefing. Therefore, to fully comply with your request, we would have to conduct searches across every business area of the Scottish Government to determine what briefings had been provided to Ministers containing the terms “Scottish independence” and/or “referendum” in 2024, which would not be possible to do within the upper cost limit.
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 a particular topic concerning Scottish independence that you are interested in, or briefing for a particular meeting or event that a Scottish Government Minister attended, 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: http://www.itspublicknowledge.info/YourRights/Tipsforrequesters.aspx
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.
Contact
Please quote the FOI reference
Central Correspondence Unit
Email: contactus@gov.scot
Phone: 0300 244 4000
The Scottish Government
St Andrews House
Regent Road
Edinburgh
EH1 3DG
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