Edwards and Scottish Ministers 140 – 2008: SIC 5 Nov 2008

This decision relates to a request from Mr Edwards for the contents of a file held by the Scottish Ministers, i.e. file IMI 2/11: Security and the Terrorist Threat. The Ministers released 13 documents from the file to Mr Edwards, five of which had been redacted.
The Ministers also advised Mr Edwards that they did not ‘hold’ some of the documents in the file, as they had been provided to them by the United Kingdom Government and they held this information in confidence in terms of section 3(2)(a)(ii) of the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 (FOISA). This meant that they fell outwith the scope of FOISA. The Ministers also relied on a number of exemptions in FOISA for withholding certain information contained in the file from Mr Edwards. Mr Edwards was dissatisfied with this response and, following an internal review, applied to the Commissioner for a decision.
During the investigation, the Commissioner came to the view that some of the information which had been withheld from Mr Edwards was environmental information as defined by the Environmental Information (Scotland) Regulations 2002 (the EIRs). He therefore considered whether the Ministers should have made that information available to Mr Edwards under the EIRS.
The Commissioner found that the Ministers had been entitled, under both FOISA and the EIRs, to withhold some of the information contained in the file from Mr Edwards. He also found that some of the information requested by Mr Edwards was not held by the Ministers in terms of either section 3(2)(a)(ii) of FOISA and/or regulation 2(2)(a) of the EIRs.

Citations:

[2008] ScotIC 140 – 2008

Links:

Bailii

Jurisdiction:

Scotland

Information

Updated: 18 July 2022; Ref: scu.434246