Health Secretary's visits to Hampden Park: FOI Review

Information requested

Original Request: 202400440060

‘With regard to Neil Gray’s visits to Hampden Park, Glasgow, on 4/11/23, 17/12/23 and 20/4/24

1. All details and/or minutes of discussions he had during the visits regarding sport and/or investment.

2. All details held regarding how Mr Gray’s visits were arranged and who accompanied him.’

Response

I have now completed my review of our response to your request under the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 (FOISA) for:

‘With regard to Neil Gray’s visits to Hampden Park, Glasgow, on 4/11/23, 17/12/23 and 20/4/24

1. All details and/or minutes of discussions he had during the visits regarding sport and/or investment.
2. All details held regarding how Mr Gray’s visits were arranged and who accompanied him.’

I have concluded that the original decision should be confirmed, with modifications as set out below.

I have looked into each of the three specific points you raised in your review request dated 11 December 2024 and can advise as follows:

1) The summaries of engagement at matches dated 4/11/23 and 20/4/24 have been provided but presented without context so it is unclear whether these were contemporaneous notes or written more recently. Could you provide the missing detail of when they were generated/written?

I have asked the official who wrote the notes of both meetings and they said that they thought they were written fairly soon after each of the two matches took place so they were certainly not written recently. I have confirmed that the note of the match on 4/11/2023 was saved in our records management system on 14 November 2023 and the note from 20/4/2024 was saved on 17 July 2024, although in both cases it is understood that the note was probably drafted earlier, but only added to the records management system on those dates.

2) Secondly, the summary of engagement for the match dated 17/12/23 has not been provided at all. From the absence of a Section 17 declaration, I infer that this document does exist.

You noted in your email that Mr Gray told Parliament in his ministerial statement of 14/11/24: “Summary notes are available and set out the topics covered during discussions at the majority of the engagements that have been reported on. Those notes align with obligations 4.23 and 4.24 of the ministerial code and ensure that discussions relating to Government business are appropriately recorded.” In providing this information, again, could you provide the context of when this summary was generated/written?

I have checked and no minute or summary has been identified for the match on 17 December 2023 as being held on our records management system. Officials aim to provide a short summary note of each sporting engagement, but not in all cases as it might not always be practical to do so, and in this case no note was produced. I apologise that this was not made clear in the original response to your request. Under section 17(1) of FOISA I can therefore confirm that this particular element of the information you requested is not held by the Scottish Government.

3) Thirdly, while a broad description of the process by which ministers are invited to events was provided in the Scottish Government’s response letter, could you please send me all the correspondence evidencing how Mr Gray came to be invited on each of these occasions? This would be in accordance with my original request.

I have been able to locate some additional email correspondence in relation to these three matches, which indicates how Mr Gray was invited to attend those events. This is provided at Annex A. However, while we aim to provide information wherever possible, I have redacted some information from the emails in Annex A where it relates to names, email addresses and phone numbers of staff below senior civil service level. This information is exempt from release under section 38(1)(b) of FOISA because it is personal data and its release would contravene data protection legislation. This particular exemption is not subject to the public interest test.

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.

FOI 202400444808 - Information Released - Annex

File type

PDF

File size

269.0 kB