Dear Cabinet Office,

I refer to a FoI that I submitted to DHSC requesting copies of the minutes of the PPE Decision Making Committee (DMC).
https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/d...

In their response they informed me that the committee was organised and led by the Cabinet Office and that I should direct my request to you as you hold the minutes.
Their response was unhelpful and evasive since they will certainly have copies of those minutes within the Department which they could have sent to me.

Please would you therefore provide me with copies of meetings of the PPE DMC.
I do not know how many of these meetings were held, in what must have been an exceedingly busy time for you all. I therefore do not know how many sets of minutes it is reasonable for me to request, given that you may apply an exemption on the grounds of cost if I ask for too many. So please would you provide the minutes of as many meetings as possible within that constraint which were held from 1st July 2020 onwards. Please prioritise minutes of those meetings at which any decisions were made whether or not to progress the purchase orders that had been approved by the PPE Clearance Board as shown in the summary of their minutes and actions arising in this document: https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/d...

Yours faithfully,

David Osborn

Dear Cabinet Office,

Your Reference FOI2024/06504

Please pass this on to the person who conducts Freedom of Information reviews.

I am writing to request an internal review of Cabinet Office's handling of my FOI request 'DO-20 Request minutes of the PPE Decision Making Committee'.

Thank you for your letter of 14 June 2024 in response to my response to my FoI request.

Please be assured that I absolutely do understand and accept your confirmation that you do not have any records of the PPE Decision Making Committee (PPE-DMC). I also note that there were no Cabinet Office representatives on the PPE DMC.

However, I am asking you to conduct an internal review of this FoI request. The reason is that when I submitted an FoI request to DHSC requesting minutes of the PPE-DMC they replied “We can confirm that DHSC does not hold any further minutes of this Committee’s meetings. This Committee was organised and led by the Cabinet Office (CO), so we suggest that you may wish to direct your request to the CO in terms of any further meetings”.

That quite explicit and unambiguous assertion and advice was the reason I raised the FoI with yourselves. On the face of it someone at DHSC is not being entirely straight with me and that is why I am asking you to carry out an internal review. I am referring them to the ICO and will mention my correspondence with you as they may find it helpful to tap into your knowledge about the DMC.

In a later letter to me explaining the outcome of their internal review, the DHSC have stated “I can confirm, therefore, that DHSC does not hold the information you have requested. This is because no such committee called ‘DHSC PPE Decision Making Committee’ exists/has existed.

In view of this blunt denial from them that the committee ever existed, I am grateful to you for confirming that the PPE-DMC did, in fact, exist and your explanation that its role was to consider derogations from PPE standards.

A full history of my FOI request and all correspondence is available on the Internet at this address: https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/d...

Yours faithfully,

David Osborn

Dear Cabinet Office,

I have referred this to the ICO as no response after 40 days.

It may save them time and trouble if you would respond soon to this request for an internal review - which ought not to be too challenging for you.

I have also referred DHSC to the ICO (https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/d...)
in the hope that one of you will eventually provide the minutes of the meetings I have requested.

The making of Freedom of Information requests really should not be so difficult and time-consuming for the requestor.

Yours faithfully,
David Osborn

Dear Cabinet Office,

Thank you for your response to my request for an internal review.

DHSC had denied that a committee ever existed called the "PPE Decision Making Committee" and I note that Cabinet Office also confirms that it never existed.

However, I am grateful to you for informing me that there was actually a committee called the "Cross-Government PPE Decision Making Committee".

If it wasn't for the waste of my time (and that of the ICO) and undisguised obfuscation by Government Departments I might actually find your response rather funny as the supreme example of the idiom "splitting hairs".

Nevertheless I accept the outcome of your internal review and consider the FoI closed.

Yours faithfully,

David Osborn