Breakdown of Scottish Government Amazon Prime spend: FOI release

Information requested

1. A breakdown of spending by the Scottish Government on Amazon Prime for the last ten financial years.

2. For each year, please include:
a. The total amount spent.
b. A detailed breakdown of the spending, specifying each item purchased and its cost.

3. If possible, the MSP who the product was bought for. For example, a lamp for John Swinney’s office.If providing ten years of data is not possible due, please provide as much of the requested information as possible.

If possible, can I please have this information on an Excel sheet.

Response

A data report has been downloaded from the Scottish Government corporate ePC (electronic purchasing card) system and a filter of 'Amazon Prime' used to identify spend.

I enclose some of the information you requested in the format you asked for. The SG only holds ePC data as far back as September 2019, therefore the data provided is from 27th September 2019 until 16th January 2025.

1. A breakdown of spending is in the table below.

Financial Year	Spend
2020*	£ 619.42
2021	£ 1,652.04
2022	£ 2,945.58
2023	£ 3,103.76
2024	£ 3,076.95
2025	£ 2,134.00
Grand Total	£ 13,531.75

*Start date is 27th September 2019

2. Please see the attached Excel sheet for a detailed breakdown, an exemption applies as personal data has been redacted in column F. Please note there are some blank line item descriptions, this is where the cardholder has not included the line level detail.

An exemption under section 38(1)(b) of FOISA applies to some of the information you have requested because it is personal data of a third party, i.e. names/contact details of individuals, 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 exemption 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 exemption.

At line 1342 on the attached Excel sheet the description is 'This is a purchase in error and I will reimburse SG.'. It has been confirmed that this purchase was a genuine error and that the amount of £95.00 has been reimbursed by the cardholder to Scottish Government.

3. We are not able to identify if a product was purchased for an MSP as the data does not hold this level information.

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 202500448142 - Information released - Annex

File type

Excel document

File size

88.8 kB