First Minister speech notes on Programme for Government 2024/25: EIR Review

Information requested

Orginal Request 202400430255

Any briefing or speaking notes provided to John Swinney ahead of his speech today (Wednesday 4 September 2024) on the Scottish Government’s 2024/25 Programme for Government.

Response

I have now completed my review of our response to your request under the Freedom of Information Act (Scotland) 2002 (FOISA) regarding any briefing or speaking notes provided to John Swinney ahead of his speech today (Wednesday 4 September 2024) on the Scottish Government’s 2024/25 Programme for Government.

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 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. I apologise that your initial request was not initially considered under the EIRs as it should have been.

I have concluded that under the EIRs, an exception to the release of certain information requested can be made, under Regulation 6(1)(b), Regulation 10(4)(e) and Regulation 11(2) (see Annex A for details, including the application of the ‘public interest test’ where relevant). However, as part of the review we have accepted that we were wrong to withhold the briefing in its entirety, and some of this previously withheld information is now being released (Annex B).

The published speech that enables an exception to the release of the speaking notes to be applied under Regulation 6(1)(b) can be found on the Scottish Government’s website at https://www.gov.scot/publications/programme-for-government-firstministers-speech-4-september-2024/.

About FOI

The Scottish Government is committed to publishing all information released in response to Freedom of Information requests. View all FOI responses at https://www.gov.scot/foi-responses.

EIR 202400435222 - Information Released - Annex A and B

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