Publication - FOI/EIR release

UK Statistics Authority renewable energy statement: EIR release

Published: 18 December 2023
Directorate: Chief Economist Directorate
Topic: Public sector
FOI reference: 202300345980
Date received: 5 March 2023
Date responded: 27 March 2023

Information request and response under the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002.

Information requested

Please provide details of all the correspondence received by the First Minister’s office from the Chief Statistician in Scotland relating to this matter as requested by the Chair of the UK Statistics Authority.
Please also provide details of any correspondence sent from the First Minister’s office to the Chief Statistician in Scotland relating to this matter as highlighted by the Chair of the UK Statistics Authority.
Please provide details of all internal Scottish Government discussion/meetings (including between Ministers, Civil Servants, and Special Advisers) relating to the use of statistics on renewable electricity by the First Minister of Scotland and other Scottish Minister’s and the importance of making it clear what the underlying statistics measure, to avoid misinterpretation. Please restrict the search to dates between the 2nd November 2022 and the present day.

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

1.) and 2.) Some of the information you have requested is available from the following FOI response dated 17th January 2023 https://www.gov.scot/publications/foi-202200334333/. As stated in this response, there has been no correspondence between the Chief Statistician and the First Minister relating to this matter. You will find a briefing document shared with the First Minister by Scottish Government statisticians dated 4th October 2022 relating to the matter in the annex to the FOI response linked.
3.) I enclose a copy of all internal emails about the use of statistics relating to energy under the parameters you have requested. An exemption under regulation 11(2) of EIR (personal information) applies to all of the information requested because it is personal data of a third party, ie names and contact details of individuals, and disclosing them 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.

About FOI

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