FOI/202100199649 · FOI/EIR · partially withheld
Correspondence relating to Suckler Beef Climate Scheme: EIR release
Information requested
All correspondence between Liz Ditchburn, Director-General Economy, and/or her directorate, and Fergus Ewing, the Cabinet Secretary for Rural Economy and Tourism, and/or his private office relating to the Suckler Beef Climate Scheme during the month of March 2021.
This should include the accountable officer's assessment and any ministerial response, emails, other electronic messages, handwritten notes or notes of verbal conversations.
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 b[redact]ce, 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.
I attach a copy of the information you requested, as an Annex A. For publishing purposes the document embeded on page 117 is released as Annex B.
I also attach a link to the relevant area of the Scottish Government website the subject matter of which relates to the information provided for the period concerned. If, however, you do not have internet access to obtain this information from the website(s) listed below, then please contact me again and I will send you a paper copy.
Suckler Beef Climate Group Programme Board - gov.scot (www.gov.scot)
While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance we are unable to provide a small amount the information you have requested because an exemption under regulation 11(2) provides that where the information requested includes personal data about a person other than the applicant and disclosure would contravene the data protection principles in Schedule 1 to the Data Protection Act 1998, the public authority shall not make that personal data available.
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.
Detected exemption language
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 b[redact]ce, 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. Suckler Beef Climate Group Programme Board - gov.scot (www.gov.scot) While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance we are unable to provide a small amount the information you have requested because an exemption under regulation 11(2) provides that where the information requested includes personal data about a person other than the applicant and disclosure would contravene the data protection principles in Schedule 1 to the Data Protection Act 1998, the public authority shall not make that personal data available.