The Information Commissioner’s Office has published this Decision notice IC-274704-Z2Y5 S
The full decision can be read here:
Background context can be read here
In their decision ICO has acknowledged that there was legitimate public interest but seems to have decided that any unnamed person from a stakeholder organization can contact NICE in an unofficial/personal capacity and, potentially using their position/gravitas within that organization, try to exert influence on the NICE guidelines process, with the assurance that their names will never be revealed.
This begs the question: why does NICE ask for/demand that stakeholders submit named representatives for the NICE guidelines process? It appears that the ICO has skirted around this issue.
The decision leaves interested members of the public including concerned patients speculating as to which person/people might have attempted to use their public roles to personally interfere with the NICE process and whether they misused their position in a public organization in any way to do this.
Original context:
This is a timeline of some of the material from the month of August 2021, obtained through FOI by Dom Salisbury. I have shared it given my longstanding interest in and promotion of transparency in relation to informed decision making in healthcare.
Dom Salisbury, explains the background to his FOI request in this blog of 4 December 2021:
This Text message of the 9 August 2021 was sent to the Chief Executive of NICE, Gillian Leng:
Further Text messages were provided by NICE as part of the FOI inquiry, including these Text messages to Paul Chrisp, Head of Publishing and Products, National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, 11 August 2021:
I am hugely disappointed by the apparent use of personal communications rather than the formal consultation pathways in place for NICE stakeholders. Not for the first time this is an abuse of power by highly influential organisations and the individuals within those organisations. Nearly 2 years on how can the public be assured that such misuse of influence will not repeat?