Information relating to payments made to external suppliers for purchases of goods and services: FOI release

Information request and response under the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002

FOI Reference: FOI/202300378592
Date received: 28 September 2023
Date responded: 26 October 2023

REQUEST UNDER THE FREEDOM OF INFORMATION (SCOTLAND) ACT 2002 (FOISA)

Thank you for your request dated 28 September 2023 under the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 (FOISA).

Your request

You requested information that related to payment data.

Request for information: All payments made to external suppliers for purchases of goods and services between the dates 2022-01-01 and 2022-12-31.

You asked for this information to be presented as a list, ideally in Microsoft Excel format, containing the following information:

• Supplier name
• Amount paid, excluding VAT
• Payment date (or some other relevant transaction date, for example billing or booking date)
• A unique invoice-id or a transaction-id number for each payment
• Some description of the nature of the expense (for example cost centre or booking account name)

Response to your request

Please see the two attached documents which provides details of all payments to external suppliers for purchases of goods and services between 1 January 2022 and 31 December 2022, and includes the following detail:

• Supplier name
• Amount paid,
• Payment date
• Description of the nature of the expense

An exemption under section 35(1)(a) of FOISA applies to some of the information you have requested. This exemption applies where disclosure of information under the Act would, or would be likely to, prejudice substantially the prevention or detection of crime. Invoice numbers have not been provided as the format of invoice numbers are specific to organisations and fraudsters may use this information to create realistic invoices in order to defraud.

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. We recognise that there is a public interest in disclosing information as part of open, transparent and accountable government, and to inform public debate. However, there is a greater public interest in fraud prevention and the secure administration of the benefits.

While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance we are unable to provide some of the supplier names within the attached documents because an exemption under section 38(1)(b), personal information of FOISA applies to that information because it is personal data of a third party, i.e. personal names, and disclosing their names would contravene the data protection principles in Article 5(1) of the General Data Protection Regulation and in section 34(1) of the Data Protection Act 2018.

This exemption is not subject to the ‘public interest test’, so we are not required to consider if the public interest in disclosing the information outweighs the public interest in applying the exemption.

You may be interested in the following reports which we regularly publish on the Social Security Scotland website:

Transactions over £25,000

Electronic Purchasing Card Transactions over £500

Our last published Annual Report can also be found here - Social Security Scotland - Annual Report 2021-2022

About FOI

Social Security Scotland is committed to publishing responses to requests. The Scottish Government also publishes responses to requests. You can view the responses at http://www.gov.scot/foi-responses.