The court also examined emails between civil servants from earlier in May 2022 which Mr Dunlop said showed issues were being “kept secret” from firms.<\/p>\n
A working group had been set up for companies which would be subject to the new system, with a publicly available register of potential risks to the plans.<\/p>\n
The boss of one firm had written in on 6 May questioning whether compliance with internal market rules should be added to the register.<\/p>\n
Civil servants discussed not doing this, because they had separately been threatened with legal action by a member of the Scottish Grocer’s Federation, which was part of the group.<\/p>\n
Emails said it would be “difficult to include” information about the internal market concerns when the grocer’s federation and other “potentially litigious partners are in the room”.<\/p>\n
Mr Dunlop said this appeared to be an attempt to “run down the clock” on a judicial review – which has to be lodged within three months of a decision being made.<\/p>\n
Mr Holmes replied: “I read it more as saying there’s a general awareness of these risks and we are keen to avoid being pinned down on our own evaluation of how significant they are, given we are involved in an ongoing legal challenge.”<\/p>\n
When Mr Dunlop suggested the government was “keeping things secret” to avoid legal action, the civil servant replied: “I think that’s a very strong way of putting it.<\/p>\n
“We were trying to manage what information we put out in the public domain when there is a threat of being involved in litigation with a stakeholder who is in the room.”<\/p>\n
Ms Slater is due to give evidence to the court in due course – as is former Scottish Secretary Alister Jack, who Ms Slater accused of an “act of sabotage” after the scheme collapsed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The court also examined emails between civil servants from earlier in May 2022 which Mr Dunlop said showed…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":220708,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[1397,90,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-220707","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-environment","tag-science","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/220707","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=220707"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/220707\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/220708"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=220707"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=220707"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=220707"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}