FOI 2025/1430

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’m talking about formal arrangements between an NHS organisation and one or more pharmaceutical companies, governed by the Department of Health and Social Care’s definition: “Situations 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.”
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: “All 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.”
I would therefore like to request the following records from you:
1. A copy of the executive summary of each joint working agreement your ICB entered into with a pharmaceutical industry company from 1 April 2019 to 31 August 2025. Please include any records that were held by the predecessor organisations, the clinical commissioning groups, that are now held by your ICB.
2. A copy of the ICB’s 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 ICB. 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.

1. NHS Greater Manchester (NHS GM) was formed on the 1 July 2022 following the merger of the 10 former Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs) of Greater Manchester (being NHS Bolton CCG, NHS Bury CCG, NHS Heywood, Middleton and Rochdale CCG, NHS Manchester CCG, NHS Oldham CCG, NHS Salford CCG, NHS Stockport CCG, NHS Tameside and Glossop CCG, NHS Trafford CCG and NHS Wigan Borough CCG) as such, documents produced prior to 1 July 2022, are held on various data bases throughout the 10 localities.

NHS GM does not have a search engine/functionality to be able to search all documents on those data bases for key words such as joint working arrangements/ Pharmaceutical Industry etc, therefore a manual search would be required.

On this basis, the information is considered exempt by virtue of Section 12(1).

Section 12. — (1) Section 12(1) does not oblige a public authority to comply with a request for information if the authority estimates that the cost of complying with the request would exceed the appropriate limit.

The Freedom of Information Act allows Public Authorities to decline to answer FOI requests when we estimate it would cost us more than £450 (equivalent to 18 hours, calculated at £25 per hour) to identify, locate, extract, and then provide the information that has been asked for. To search all data bases, would exceed the appropriate limit prescribed in the act.

Although we cannot answer your request, we might be able to answer a refined request within the cost limit. For example, you may wish to consider specifying the function/team, and /or the timeframe your request refers to.

Please be aware that we cannot guarantee at this stage that a refined request will fall within the cost limit, but NHS GM would do our upmost to assist you.

2. A formal Working With Industry Policy is currently being drafted, however, please find attached the NHS Greater Manchester Conflicts of Interest Policy.

Please refer to page 2, which provides a link to the ABPI: The Code of Practice for the Pharmaceutical Industry (2021).

Section 13 of the policy provides the following:

Wider transparency initiatives

1.1        NHS GM fully supports wider transparency initiatives in healthcare, and we encourage staff to engage actively with these.

1.2        Relevant staff are strongly encouraged to give their consent for payments they receive from the pharmaceutical industry to be disclosed as part of the Association of British Pharmaceutical Industry (ABPI) Disclosure UK initiative.  These “transfers of value” include payments relating to:

• Speaking at and chairing meetings
• Training services
• Advisory board meetings
• Fees and expenses paid to healthcare professionals
• Sponsorship of attendance at meetings, which includes registration fees and the costs of accommodation and travel, both inside and outside the UK
• Donations, grants and benefits in kind provided to healthcare organisations

1.3        Further information about the scheme can be found on the ABPI website: https://www.abpi.org.uk/our-ethics/disclosure-uk/about-disclosure-uk/#6954c18c

In addition to this, please also find attached the NHS Greater Manchester Procurement Policy, which demonstrates the ICBs robust processes in place regarding procurement, including processes for ensuring any conflicts of interest are considered.

** PDF documents were sent to the requester with this response.  Unfortunately, we are unable to add these onto the website.  If you require a copy of the full response, together with the PDF documents, please contact the FOI team directly on nhsgm.foi@nhs.net