Internal Reference Number: FOI_8918
Date Request Received: 23/09/2025 00:00:00
Date Request Replied To: 05/11/2025 00:00:00
This response was sent via: By Email
Request Summary: collaborative working and joint working arrangements pharmaceutical industry
Request Category: Media
| Question Number 1: I am writing to make a formal request for information under the provisions of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 regarding collaborative working and joint working arrangements entered into by your organisation and companies in the pharmaceutical industry. For clarity, I鈥檓 talking about formal arrangements between NHS organisations and one or more pharmaceutical companies, governed by the Department of Health and Social Care鈥檚 definition: 鈥淪ituations where, for the benefit of patients, one or more pharmaceutical companies, the NHS and others (e.g. Patient Groups) pool skills, experience and/or resources for the joint development and implementation of patient-centred projects and share a commitment to successful delivery.鈥� Transparency is a must for these projects, according to both the government and the Association of British Pharmaceutical Industry. ABPI oversees the implementation of its code of practice, which contains specific instructions for industry when participating in joint working projects. It says: 鈥淎ll Joint Working projects must be underpinned by a formal Joint Working Agreement, an executive summary of which must be made publicly available before the project begins.鈥� I would therefore like to request the following records from you: 鈥� A copy of the executive summary of each joint working agreement your trust entered into with a pharmaceutical industry company from 1 April 2019 to 31 August 2025. If your trust has gone through any organisational changes in the intervening period between those two dates, such as being formed from a merger of two or more constituent trusts, please provide all the records that you hold going back as far as you can and please highlight the earliest date they correspond to. 鈥� A copy of the trust鈥檚 policy on joint working with the pharmaceutical industry. Please send these in an electronic format, either PDF or one compatible with Microsoft Word. I appreciate this may include searching for many multiple documents held by the trust. I do not believe they should be any need to redact them as these documents are intended to be made public. However, I would respectfully point out that in Chief Constable of South Yorkshire v Information Commissioner (2011) the High Court ruled that a public body cannot include the time it would spend redacting exempt information in its estimates of the costs of complying with an FOI request and deciding whether complying would exceed the cost limit. | |
| Answer To Question 1: Please see attached document To accompany this answer to question 1 please also see the documents listed below:  FOI 8918.pdf | |
| Please see Attachments: | |
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