EIR/202500472247 · FOI/EIR · partially withheld
Multi-year funding for farmers correspondence: EIR release
Information requested
Any correspondence sent to or from the Scottish Government on the subject of multi-year funding for farmers within the last year.
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 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.
I enclose a copy of most of the information you requested in the format of emails and letters collated into a PDF document which have been provided with this response.
Other documents have been provided additionally that are already in the public domain and supplied as supplementary documents in this response. Details of these documents have been provided in the Annex of this letter
Under regulation 6(1)(b) of the EIRs, we do not have to give you information which is already publicly available and easily accessible to you in another form or format. Some of the information you have requested is available from:
1. Scotland’s Rural Economy - https://www.gov.scot/news/scotlands-rural-economy/ 2. NFUS discussion on long-term farm funding - https://www.fwi.co.uk/news/farm-policy/snp-urged-toguarantee-long-term-farm-funding?fw_source=home_transition
While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance, under Section 38(1)(b) the Scottish Government is unable to share personal information as such has redacted this information.
Whilst our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance we are unable to provide some of the information you have requested because an exception(s) under Regulation 10(4)(e) of the EIR applies to that information. The Scottish Government is unable to provide information on internal communication and has redacted this 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.
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 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. NFUS discussion on long-term farm funding - https://www.fwi.co.uk/news/farm-policy/snp-urged-toguarantee-long-term-farm-funding?fw_source=home_transition While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance, under Section 38(1)(b) the Scottish Government is unable to share personal information as such has redacted this information.