EIR/202400443939 · FOI/EIR · partially withheld
Meetings between the National Farmers Union (NFU) Scotland and the Cabinet Secretary for Rural Affairs, Land Reform and Islands: EIR release
Information requested
How many times has a meeting taken place between NFU Scotland and Mairi Gougeon and or Jim Fairlie between December 2023 and December 2024? Please can you share the dates and times of these meetings? Between 2021 and December 2023 how many meetings took place between NFU Scotland and a member of the Scottish Government? Please can you also share the dates and times of these meetings?
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.
Q1 request: Please can I request the following information: (1)How many times has a meeting taken place between NFU Scotland and Mairi Gougeon and or Jim Fairlie between December 2023 and December 2024?
Q1 response: Ms Gougeon has had 8 meetings, with Mr Fairlie having had 13 meetings.
TABLE 1
The number of times a meeting has taken place between NFUS and Ms Gougeon between December 2023 and December 2024 8 Date Time 08 February 2024 19:00 09 February 2024 09:30 – 10:30 23 May 2024 10:00 – 10:45 21 June 2024 10:15 – 10:35 29 July 2024 10:00 – 12:30 12 September 2024 10:45 – 11:30 28 November 2024 16:00 – 16:45 04 December 2024 15:30 – 15:50
TABLE 2
The number of times a meeting has taken place between NFUS and Mr Fairlie between December 2023 and December 2024 13 Date Time 08 February 2024 19:00 09 February 2024 09:30 – 10:30 26 March 2024 10:00 – 10:30 22 April 2024 16:00 03 June 2024 12:15 - 12:45 20 June 2024 13:15 – 13:30 05 August 2024 10:45 – 12:30 31 August 2024 12:00 – 12:30 24 October 2024 10:00 – 11:15 01 November 2024 08:00 – 09:30 12 November 2024 10:30 – 13:00 13 November 2024 10:00 – 11:00 28 November 2024 13:00 – 13:30 28 November 2024 16:00 – 16:45 04 December 2024 15:30 – 15:50
Q2 request: Please can I request the following information: (2) Please can you share the dates and times of these meetings?
Q2 response: The dates and times are provided in Table 1 (above) for Ms Gougeon. The dates and times are provided in Table 2 (above) for Mr Fairlie.
Q3 request: Please can I request the following information: (3) Between 2021 and December 2023 how many meetings took place between NFU Scotland and a member of the Scottish Government?
Q3 response: The answer is 59 meetings, and I have included a table below (Table 3) with the meetings with the NFUS with members of the Scottish Government, as published online, on the dates you requested, 2021 – December 2023, for ease of reference:
TABLE 3
Name of Minister NFUS Engagement Date Fergus Ewing Meeting/Tele 20/01/2021 Fergus Ewing Meeting/Tele 16/02/2021 Roseanna Cunningham Meeting/Tele 02/04/2021 Mairi Gougeon Meeting/Tele 06/04/2021 Kate Forbes Meeting/Video Conference 11/05/2021 Mairi Gougeon Meeting/Phone 19/05/2021 Mairi Gougeon Meeting 15/07/2021 Mairi Gougeon Meeting 23/08/2021 Mairi Gougeon Meeting 25/08/2021 Fergus Ewing Meeting 03/09/2021 Mairi Gougeon Meeting/Tele 06/09/2021 Mairi McAllan Meeting/Tele 16/09/2021 Fergus Ewing Meeting/Phone 03/10/2021 Mairi Gougeon Meeting 28/10/2021 Fergus Ewing Meeting/Tele 02/12/2021 Lorna Slater Meeting/Video Conference 14/12/2021 Mairi McAllan Meeting 16/02/2022 Mairi Gougeon Meeting/Video Conference 24/02/2022 Lorna Slater Meeting 08/06/2022 Mairi Gougeon Meeting 22/06/2022 Mairi McAllan Meeting 22/06/2022 Mairi McAllan Meeting 23/06/2022 Mairi McAllan Speech 23/06/2022 Lorna Slater Visit 24/06/2022 Mairi Gougeon Visit 24/06/2022 Mairi Gougeon Meeting 12/07/2022 Mairi McAllan Meeting/Video Conference 12/07/2022 Mairi Gougeon Meeting/Video Conference 14/07/2022 Jamie Hepburn Meeting 23/09/2022 Mairi Gougeon Meeting 13/10/2022 Mairi McAllan Speech 27/10/2022 Mairi Gougeon Visit 02/11/2022 Mairi Gougeon Conference 02/11/2022 Mairi Gougeon Meeting/Video Conference 05/12/2022 Mairi Gougeon Reception 09/02/2023 Mairi Gougeon Meeting 10/02/2023 Mairi Gougeon Meeting/ with MSPs 07/03/2023 Mairi Gougeon Meeting/tele 03/05/2023 Mairi Gougeon Meeting 11/05/2023 Mairi Gougeon Meeting 17/05/2023 Mairi Gougeon Meeting/ with MP 19/05/2023 Mairi Gougeon Visit 12/06/2023 Shona Robinson Meeting 15/06/2023 Lorna Slater Meeting 23/06/2023 Mairi Gougeon Meeting 23/06/2023 Mairi McAllan Visit 10/07/2023 Paul McLennan Meeting/Video Conference 09/08/2023 Lorna Slater Meeting 26/09/2023 Mairi Gougeon Meeting/Video Conference 27/09/2023 Fiona Hyslop Meeting 11/10/2023 Mairi Gougeon Meeting 13/10/2023 Mairi Gougeon Meeting/Video Conference 25/10/2023 Mairi Gougeon Conference 26/10/2023 Mairi Gougeon Conference 22/11/2023 Mairi Gougeon Meeting 22/11/2023 Shona Robinson Meeting 22/11/2023 Mairi Gougeon Meeting 05/12/2023 Mairi Gougeon Meeting 06/12/2023 Richard Lochhead Meeting 12/12/2023
Q4 request: Please can I request the following information: (4) Please can you also share the dates and times of these meetings?
Q4 response: Please see the table above (Table 3) for the dates as requested. While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance the Scottish Government does not have the information you have requested, regarding specific timings and duration of the meetings. This is because The Scottish Government does not have some of the information you have asked for because Scottish Government standard records management protocol requires that Ministerial Outlook accounts (incorporating mailbox and calendar) must be maintained at a size (in GBs) which will not impact on functionality. This means that emails are retained for a maximum of three months, and calendars updated to retain only information required for archive. Ministerial meetings are proactively published on the Scottish Government website: https://www.gov.scot/collections/ministerial-engagements-travel-andgifts/
About FOI
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Contact Please quote the FOI reference Central Correspondence Unit Email: contactus@gov.scot Phone: 0300 244 4000 The Scottish Government St Andrew's House Regent Road Edinburgh EH1 3DG
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.
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