Dear Department of Health and Social Care,

I refer to this email thread:
https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/d...

Please would you provide copies of emails and related documents (including attachments) relating to the email thread 22 December 2020 16:47 sent from DHSC to NHS England and PHE. This should include correspondence to and from the Secretary of State's office which is referred to in this email chain (22 Dec, 15:39).
Please also provide notes taken of the “check-in” referred to in this email (presumably a phone, zoom or similar communication between an IPC representative of NHS-E and DHSC) together with any other emails concerning the PHE recommendation to extend the use of FFP3 respirators in healthcare settings.

Please also provide copies of emails received from PHE forwarding their “Evidenced proposal” to you, known as INQ000408394
https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/d...
together with any further correspondence relating to matters raised in this report (including emails with the Secretary of State or his office and emails with NHS-E and PHE). I believe this will have been sent to you from PHE on 23 Dec 2020 or shortly after.

In order to limit the scope of this request to within reasonable bounds, the date-range for the required documents is restricted to the period between 22 Dec 2020 and 5 January 2021.

Yours faithfully,

David Osborn

Dear Department of Health and Social Care,

Thank you for the update.

However I am mindful that DHSC's delayed responses have, in the past, taken up to 27 months.

The Act prescribes a period of 20 working days for a public authority to respond, which has now passed.

I am happy to wait a further 10 working days for the requested information before referring to ICO, which I belive is a reasonable extension.

Yours faithfully,

David Osborn

Dear Department of Health and Social Care,

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

I am writing to request an internal review of Department of Health and Social Care's handling of my FOI request 'DO-23 Correspondence relating to IPC Cell meetings 22-23 Dec 2020 and PHE's Evidenced Proposal'.

I am dissatisfied with your response on the following grounds that
(1) You have not disclosed all the information you hold which I requested; and
(2) You have massively over-redacted information

Taking the documents you have supplied in turn, using the numbers prefixing your filenames:

1) email chain heavily redacted. First item shown = email P Tatton, 31/12/20 15:59

1a) You have redacted, in their entirety, 15 emails which should not have been redacted. Please supply this whole thread unredacted. If any fall outside my specified time-frame then please unredact the date/time stamp.

Based on the “out of scope” message you have applied, you seem to think that these are out of scope of my request. They are not. I carefully linked my request to a specific email dated 22/12/20 16:47 which was sent from DHSC to NHS England and PHE. I shall refer to this as the “reference email” below.

I asked for all emails and related documents relating to this email. Every single email in the document provided is a “document relating to that email” and should not therefore have been redacted.

The messages in document (5) “Not in Scope – not from DHSC” demonstrates your misunderstanding. You seem to have misinterpreted my FoI to only require emails where DHSC was the sender. The fact that I specifically asked for “correspondence TO AND FROM the Secretary of State’s office” should have made it clear to you that I was requesting all correspondence (inbound and outbound).

1b) I understand that permitted redaction protocols only relate to the less senior members of staff. In the email 24/12/20 14:29 you have redacted the name of the “Head of the PPE Engagement Team” which seems too senior for such redaction. Please check your redaction protocols.

1c) In the email 23/12/20 09:41 there is mention of “comments from Jonathan Marron below”, yet you have redacted both the emails below (including, presumably, the ones to and from Mr Marron. This shows that, even if you misinterpreted my request to include only emails sent from a person in DHSC (and he was a Director General in DHSC), you have redacted emails you shouldn’t have. Your comment in (5) indicates that you have deemed it “out of scope” as it was internal DHSC to DHSC emails. As explained in 1(a) above, all emails that related to the “reference email” are in scope. Please provide unredacted.

3) email 31/12/20 13:26:39
The position “Director – PPE Demand” is clearly a very senior post. Please check your redaction protocol has been correctly applied.

4) emails: Jenny Harries 24/12/20 09:40
The email from AF to JH clearly attaches (or copies below) some document giving the HSE’s perspective. That falls within the scope of my FoI request as a “related document”. Please provide the document(s) which give the HSE’s perspective.

5) email chain with the first visible email 24/12/2020 10:22
As with (1) above, massively over-redacted. You have redacted 6 emails which should not have been redacted. Please supply these unredacted.

I note from the page numbers at the bottom of the pages that pages 1 to 6, 8 and 9, together with 15 onwards are all missing. It is clear from the subject line that these are all “related documents”. Please supply all emails unredacted which contain the text “Urgent: Advice on FFP3 masks” in the subject line as these are all in-scope.

6) email 23/12/20 12:23
You have redacted the organisation to which the sender belongs. You should not redact to the right of the “@”.

Other matters to be included in your Internal Review, based on your covering letter dated 30 Jan 2025.

In the 4 elements of my request which you have reproduced in bold/italic type:
i) You omitted my following sentence “This should include correspondence to and from the Secretary of State’s office which is referred to in this email chain (22 Dec, 15:39)”. Furthermore, you did not provide that correspondence. I remind you of the key statement “We’ve received an urgent request from SoS’ office on FFP3s.” Please provide all such correspondence relating to these threads of emails since it is obvious to anyone that they do exist.

ii) Notes of “check in” : I take your word that no notes were made.

iii) other emails relating to PHE recommendation : I have to take your word for this

iv) correspondence relating to PHE’s “Evidenced Proposal” INQ000408394
I apologise for any confusion which may have been caused by a typo in my reference to the INQ number which should have been INQ000408934 (not …394). However, since I actually provided you with a link to the report in question I believe that you should have recognised the document to which I referred and been able to identify related correspondence.
https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/d...

I therefore cannot accept that the typo on my part provided sufficient reason for you to state that you do not hold this information. Of course it goes without saying that the original document would not have had this INQ number since this was assigned some years later.

From other sources, I have some evidence that you do, indeed, hold such information (i.e. correspondence relating to the PHE report). However certain legally-binding confidentiality constraints prevent me from disclosing details to you. I still require copies of emails from PHE forwarding their report and associated correspondence please. As part of your internal review, please locate and provide this information.

Thanking you in advance.

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 Department of Health and Social Care,

Thank you for your message dated 18 February.

I am sorry if you found the wording in my original FoI or in my request for IR unclear. I will clarify.

The wording of my request was : “copies of emails and related documents (including
attachments) relating to the email thread 22 December 2020 16:47 sent from
DHSC to NHS England and PHE. This should include correspondence to and from the Secretary of State's office which is referred to in this email chain (22 Dec, 15:39)”

You have asked me to clarify two points:
(1) “DEFINE ‘RELATED’ I.E. DO YOU MEAN RELATING ONLY TO THE SUBJECT MENTIONED WITHIN THE EMAILS YOU HAVE CITED (IE: HAVE THE SUBJECT LINE FW: URGENT: ADVICE ON FFP3 MASKS) OR IS THERE ANOTHER CONNECTION YOU HAVE IN MIND. I NOTE THE SUBJECT HEADING OF YOUR FOI REQUEST DIFFERS.

ANSWER: My request would certainly include all emails which have the text “Urgent: Advice on FFP3 masks” in the subject line (not just those with the prefix “FW:”, some may have “RE:” or various combinations thereof. Indeed the initial email which started this thread would not have any such prefix at all and I have not yet seen this.).

As a reminder, the email thread I am talking about is at this address:
https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/d...

The earliest email in that thread was sent by DHSC at 15:39. It was, itself, “FW:” so there was obviously one or more other email(s) preceding it, though the earlier emails were not actually being forwarded (i.e. had been deleted from the chain below). It is possible that the earlier email(s) were from the SoS to DHSC (by “SoS” I mean either the then Secretary of State or someone in his office.). For the avoidance of doubt I am asking you to disclose those emails and any which followed later (e.g. returning the answers received back from PHE/NHS)

You make a valid point that my use of the term “Related to” could open the request to a very wide (perhaps unreasonable) scope, I will be more precise as to what I am getting at.

It appears that the above thread (with the subject “Urgent: Advice on FFP3 masks”) was sent by someone in DHSC to PHE and NHS after they had received a request from the Secretary of State’s office. This was explicitly stated in the email.

The request from SoS may well have come to that DHSC person by email with a different subject line – for example “Please clarify with PHE/NHS what the position is about wider use of FFP3” (or something like that). Then, following the various emails between DHSC/PHE/NHS which you have provided (albeit over-redacted) there would probably have been a reply back to the SoS’s office answering the question.

You’ll note that in my original FoI request I did specify that I would like to see the correspondence with the SoS’s office.

If there were other email threads spawned about the topic (i.e. emails where the subject line did not include “Urgent: Advice on FFP3 masks”) with organisations other than SoS, I would NOT expect you to provide these, recognising the extent of the task would be unreasonably high.

(2) KINDLY SPECIFY IF YOU ARE LIMITING YOUR REQUEST TO ITEMS SENT BETWEEN
PARTICULAR PARTIES, OR ARE YOU ASKING FOR ALL ITEMS, IRRESPECTIVE OF
THE SENDERS/RECIPIENTS?

Answer: Obviously I cannot identify any particular parties by individuals’ names, as these are all redacted in the information returned by FoI requests.

The confusion appears to have arisen by the way I phrased my original request so I will clarify that.

I was seeking to identify one specific email within a long thread (URL given above). I did this by giving 4 identifiers: (i) date of email, (ii) time of email, (iii) sender of email and (iv) the two recipients of email.

It was NOT intended to imply that I ONLY wanted to see emails where DHSC was the sender. I had thought my IR request clarified that point i.e. I wanted to see all emails stemming from that specific email, whoever they were from and whoever they were to.

So the same request put another way would read as follows :
“
I refer to this email thread:
https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/d...

May I direct your attention to a specific email within that thread i.e. the one which was sent by someone in DHSC to recipients in PHE and NHS-E on 22 December 2020 at 16:47hrs and which had the subject line “Urgent: Advice on FFP3 masks”.

Please send me all emails you have whose subject line includes that same text where (a) the sender was DHSC, or (b) the recipient was DHSC, or (c) DHSC was included in ‘cc :’

Please also send related emails on the same topic between DHSC the SoS even if the subject line is different. In order to narrow this search and keep it within reasonable bounds, it will be sufficient for you to:
(1) Examine the emails from SoS which were received by DHSC between 10:00 and 16:47 on 22/12/2020 which contained the text “FFP3”;
(2) Check these to see if they were asking for more information concerning PHE’s recommendation at the IPC Cell meeting that morning to extend the use of FFP3 respirators;
(3) Note the subject line of that email and then provide any email thread between DHSC and SoS which contained that subject line (i.e. will returning answers from PHE/NHS back to the SoS) and any emails to and fro in the same thread after that.
”

I hope this adequately answers your two questions. Please don’t hesitate to come back to me if you require further clarification.

Although you haven’t asked me for any clarification on the other issue which your IR needs to cover, I would like to make sure you understand why I am dissatisfied with your response where you say that “DHSC does not have emails received from PHE which attached their “Evidenced proposal”.

I gave you the number “INQ000408394” simply so you could locate a copy of the document online (and I gave you the URL link). Please note that if you had searched for emails in December 2020 which contained the text “INQ000408394”you obviously would not have found any since this reference number was only assigned by the Public Inquiry 2 or 3 years later.

If this is what you did, then please search again, but this time looking for the following text (which is the title within the PDF document):
“The use of FFP3 respirators for all suspected and confirmed COVID-19 patients in non AGP settings”.

This was sent by PHE to DHSC (and NHS-E) on or shortly after 23 December 2020. It is the email thread which followed receipt of that document which falls within the scope of my request.

Yours faithfully,

David Osborn

Dear Department of Health and Social Care,

Thank you for updating me on progress.

Yours faithfully,

David Osborn