Ministerial briefings

3 July 2020

Dear [name and contact details withheld] 

REQUEST FOR INFORMATION

Thank you for your email of 11 June 2020, in which you request the following information: 

• Monthly report for June 2020 sent to the Health Minister 

• Copy of briefings to Minister Henare on Access Equity sent in February 2020

• Correspondence from PHARMAC to Dr Shane Reti sent in March 2020
• Copy of no surprises briefing on the Application Close Out project tranche two – 17 March 2020 

The monthly report, for June 2020, for the Minister of Health has not been finalised or sent to the Minister as at the date of your request and is therefore not in scope of your request. Other documents within scope of your request are attached.  

Your request has been considered under the Official Information Act 1982 (OIA).  PHARMAC approaches requests under the OIA on the basis that, once released, the information becomes publicly available – by releasing the information to you it becomes available to any other party in that exact form (whether by you distributing it to others or by virtue of us receiving the same request from a different third party).  As such, some information has been held from these documents under section 9(2)(a), to protect the privacy of natural persons. 

As required under the OIA, we also considered whether, in the circumstances, the withholding of this information was outweighed by other considerations which render it desirable, in the public interest, to make this information available.  In this case we did not consider that the public interest outweighed the reasons for withholding the information. 

Please note you have the right, by way of complaint under section 28(3) of the OIA to an Ombudsman, to seek an investigation and review of our decision. 

We trust that this information answers your queries.  We are making our information more freely available, so we will now publish selected OIA responses (excluding personal details) on our website.  Please get in touch with us if you have any questions about this.

Yours sincerely

Rachel Read

Manager, Policy and Government Services