EIR/202500449998 · FOI/EIR · partially withheld
Energy and Climate Change Directorate meetings with Trade Unions: EIR release
Information requested
Since May 2024 how many meetings have civil servants within the Energy and Climate Change Directorate had with
1) Trade Unions that organise in the Oil and Gas sector
-A list of all these meetings, with dates attached.
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.
As this question relates to meetings between civil servants and trade unions. In this regard, we have excluded meetings between Minister’s and unions, in which civil servants were present. A list of Ministerial engagements is publicly available on the Scottish Government’s website. In addition, to ensure the information is relevant to the request we have only included meetings between unions and civil servants in which oil and gas was discussed.
1. I enclose a copy of all the information you requested.
About FOI
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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.