Beyond Oil and Gas Alliance meetings information: EIR Review

Information requested

Original request: 202400429639

A list of all internal meetings where the subject of the Beyond Oil and Gas Alliance was discussed since July 2023.

All briefing materials and agendas of these meetings.

All minutes of these meetings.

All correspondence relating to these meetings.

Response

Further to the response you received, I have now completed my review of our response to your request under the Environmental Information (Scotland) Regulations 2004 (EIRs) for 

“- A list of all internal meetings where the subject of the Beyond Oil and Gas Alliance was discussed since July 2023
- All briefing materials and agendas of these meetings
- All minutes of these meetings
- All correspondence relating to these meetings”

On 7th October you submitted a request for review advising that “the released material is extremely sparse. I do not think that this is a reasonable distraction, particularly given that it is a matter of public record that the Scottish Government committed to joining BOGA.”

I have concluded that the original decision should be overturned.

Following your request, I have determined that in the documentation supplied, information was redacted under an incorrect exception . Information was redacted under 12(3) and 12(4)(e) which are not regulations within the EIRs in the Scottish legislation and as such should not have been relied upon. These are exceptions under the UK Freedom of Information Act – FOIA which does not apply in Scotland. Furthermore, there was no mention of any redactions within the released information in the response and where information is withheld that is in scope, we must apply an exception to it.

The original decision applied an exception at regulation 10(4)(a) information not held) of the EIRs, and this decision should be overturned. I have determined that a further exception should have been applied to some of the information redacted under regulation 10(4)(a) (internal communication) of the EIRs. This exception is subject to the public interest test in regulation 10(1). Taking account of all the circumstances of this case, I have considered if the public interest in disclosing the information outweighs the public interest in applying the exception. On balance, I have assessed that some of the communications do not need to be released as they represent advice confidentially supplied to Ministers. Therefore, the public interest lies in favour of upholding the exception.

I have enclosed a copy of some of the information you asked for, with the correct exceptions applied; there has been one internal meeting where the subject of the Beyond Oil and Gas Alliance was discussed since July 2023. Please see the minute attached to this release. There were also unrelated agenda items discussed at this meeting. Information under these bullet points is therefore being withheld as it is out of the scope of your request. 

A further exception under regulation 11(2) of the EIRs (personal information) also applies to some of the relevant information 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.

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 - 202400435268 - Information released - Annex A

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