27 January 2010

Devolved Administration and Regional Stakeholder Manager

Stakeholder Engagement Team

King Charles Street

London

SW1A 2AH

Tel: 020 7008 3846

Fax: 020 7008 3510

E-mail: [email address]

Mr Wyllie

C/o whatdotheyknow.com

By email: [FOI #25455 email]

Dear Mr Wyllie,

FREEDOM OF INFORMATION REQUEST: 0003-10

I refer to your request dated 01/01/10 under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (“the Act”) for the following:

“Please provide information about the FCO's procedures over interaction with the devolved administrations in the United Kingdom.

Such information should extend to current copies of policies and procedures concerning the exchange of information and personnel, and correspondence since 1st January 2007 between the FCO and the Scotland Office and Wales Office about interaction between those nations' devolved administrations.”

Following my letter to you dated 07/01/10, in which I suggested that you might wish to narrow the scope of your request to help us answer your questions, you kindly clarified which correspondence from the FCO you were interested in:

“… please consider that latter part of my request confined to correspondence with the Scotland Office only that took place since 1st June 2008 concerning interactions between the FCO and the Devolved Administration”.

I am writing to confirm that the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) does hold information relevant within the description specified in your request.

We have provided a copy of some information that we do hold in relation to your question, which is enclosed in the format you requested.

Specifically I attach two documents relating to the part of your question about “policies and procedures”. The first document (`UNC 2010-01-12_Regular FCO interaction with the TOs and DAs') is part of the evidence the FCO supplied to the Wales Office in December 2009 to form part of the Government's evidence to the Welsh Affairs Committee's investigation into the relationship between Wales and Whitehall. We have included this information as it sets out some recent examples of the types of engagements the FCO has with the Devolved Administrations. These examples are part of the FCO's recent and ongoing efforts to increase awareness internally of effective ways of working with all three Devolved Administrations. The second document (`UNC 2010-01-12_FCO working with the DAs') shows the policies and procedures in place as part of our internal FCO Staff Guidance. In this document you will see references to Chapters 14 and 15 - this is because these are the two chapters of FCO Guidance which deal with our interactions with the Devolved Administrations.

Regarding the part of your question relating to “correspondence with the Scotland Office”, we do not hold the information centrally. It would greatly exceed the appropriate limit of £600 set by Government FOI regulations to ascertain this. According to the regulations, £600 represents the estimated cost of one person spending 3½ working days in determining whether the Department holds the information, and locating, retrieving and extracting the information. Under section 12 of the Freedom of Information Act the Department is not obliged to comply with your request and, given the cost, we are not able to answer points 5 and 10 of your request.

The information supplied to you continues to be protected by the Copyright, Designs and

Patents Act 1988. You are free to use it for your own purposes, including any non commercial research you are doing and for the purposes of news reporting. Any other reuse,

for example commercial publication, would require the permission of the copyright

holder. Most documents supplied by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office will have been

produced by government officials and will be Crown Copyright. You can find details on the arrangements for re-using Crown Copyright on HMS Online at:

http://www.hmso.gov.uk/copyright/licences/click-use-home.htm

Information you receive which is not subject to Crown Copyright continues to be protected by the copyright of the person, or organisation, from which the information originated. You must ensure that you gain their permission before reproducing any third party (non Crown Copyright) information.

If you have any queries about this letter please contact me. Please remember to quote the reference number above in any future communications.

If you are unhappy with the service you have received in relation to your request and wish to make a complaint or request a review of our decision, you should write to the Information Rights Team. Please note any request for an internal review must be submitted within 40 working days from the date our response was issued.

If you are not content with the outcome of your complaint you may apply directly to the

Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) for a decision. Generally, the ICO cannot make a decision unless you have exhausted the complaints procedure provided by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.

The Information Commissioner can be contacted at:

The Information Commissioner's Office

Wycliffe House

Water Lane

Wilmslow

Cheshire

SK9 5AF

Yours sincerely,

Alistair Starling.

2

Foreign &

Commonwealth

Office