Briefings/minutes from the meetings between Minister for Public Health and Environmental Health Policy Co-ordination Group: EIR release

Information requested

“All minutes of meetings of Environmental Health Policy Co-ordination Group since its formation. All briefings given to the Minister for Public Health regarding meetings of the Environmental Health Policy Co-ordination Group since its formation”.

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.

Response to your request

The minutes of the Environmental Health Policy Co-ordination Group that the Scottish Government hold are attached. However, please note that the minutes in the attachment dated 9 March 2023, have been saved erroneously and are actually from the meeting held 18 May 2023.

Under the terms of the exception at regulation 10(4)(a) of the EIRs (information not held), the Scottish Government is not required to provide information which it does not have. The Scottish Government does not have all the information you have requested because the group is chaired on a rotating basis as per the terms of reference. The minutes since the group's formation, October 2022, are not all held by the Scottish Government. In addition, the searches I conducted did not return any briefings given to the Minister for Public Health regarding meetings of the Environmental Health Policy Co-ordination Group.

This exception 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 exception. We have found that, on balance, the public interest lies in favour of upholding the exception. While we recognise that there may be some public interest in information about the Environmental Health Policy Co-ordination Group, clearly we cannot provide information which we do not hold.

An exception under regulation 11(2) of the EIRs (personal information) applies to some 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.

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 202400436698 - Information Released - Annex

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