FOI/19/00367 Review · FOI · partially withheld
Draft Financial Report to Social Security Audit and Assurance Committee: FOI review
Information requested
You asked for a copy of the Draft Financial Report presented to the Social Security Scotland Audit and Assurance Committee on 13 November 2018.
Response
I have completed my review of our response to your request under the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 (FOISA) for a copy of the Draft Financial Report presented to the Social Security Scotland Audit and Assurance Committee on 13 November 2018. In undertaking this review I reconsidered the application of exemption under the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 applied in the original response; namely the exemption under section 30(c) of FOISA (prejudice to effective conduct of public affairs). The public interest test has been applied.
Having completed the review I have concluded that the original decision should be confirmed with modifications. I have attached a copy of the draft financial report presented to the Social Security Scotland Audit and Assurance Committee on 13 November 2018, with less redactions from the original response in Annex A Disclosing financial information in relation to counter fraud activities would expose Social Security Scotland to substantial risk as the information could be used to determine the scale of the Agency’s counter fraud operations. It is therefore in the public interest that this information is not released. As noted in section 1.1 of the draft financial report; ‘The Agency Finance Team will provide the Audit and Assurance Committee with the most recent approved report for all meetings. Attached is a draft of the proposed report for comment.’ This was the first report, in draft format, presented to the Audit and Assurance Committee and its purpose was for comment by the committee on the format and layout not for scrutiny in this instance.
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
In undertaking this review I reconsidered the application of exemption under the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 applied in the original response; namely the exemption under section 30(c) of FOISA (prejudice to effective conduct of public affairs). As noted in section 1.1 of the draft financial report; ‘The Agency Finance Team will provide the Audit and Assurance Committee with the most recent approved report for all meetings.