It makes for an excellent conspiracy theory when the government claims it never took any minutes at a meeting. It's not simply a case of "you can't have those minutes." Rather, they don't exist.
Before Greg Clark rejected calls for a cap on student number in pharmacy schools, the minister had held separate meetings with the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) earlier in the same year.
Recently Chemist & Druggist invoked the Freedom of Information Act to access the minutes from those meetings. At first, they were refused, on the grounds of it being sensitive information.
Strangely, they were then told that those minutes were never recorded.
For anyone who isn't aware, governments and large companies are required
to produce written records of meetings and hearings i.e. minutes; for
the purpose of maintaining transparency.
What does this mean? It means we don't know who attended those meetings and what was discussed. That information has been suppressed. It's even more suspcicious as the Pharmacy sector now has no idea who Greg Clark has been consulting and what evidence has been used to back up the decision making process. Probably not the kind he wants anyone to know about.
Here's what we do know. Earlier this year, the government proposed a new system to check prescription fraud, but remained tight lipped over the specifics. To quote Chemist & Druggist:
"The DH held information on the estimated cost and where it would be
borne, it admitted, but considered this information exempt from the
Freedom of Information Act. Although it recognised there was a public
interest in revealing this information, the DH said, its officials
should be able to 'candidly discuss policy options' without them being
'held up to scrutiny before they have been fully developed'."
Without being held up to scrutiny? In other words, force through an unpopular policy in the face of hard evidence and widespread opposition. The similarities between this and the BIS meetings are uncanny
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