The Cabinet Office has finally responded to my Freedom of Information Act request, which asked:

1. Which representatives of the No. 10 and Foreign Office (to include the CIC) press offices attended the meetings of the dossier drafting group on 9 and 17 September 2002, as described by (Sir) John Scarlett in his Hutton Inquiry evidence? (Please state which individuals attended which meeting)
2. What contribution(s) did those individuals make to the discussions at those meetings?
3. Please provide any minutes or notes of those meetings, redacting where necessary the identities of participants other than those individuals described above.

After fourteen weeks - i.e. ten weeks beyond the statutory deadline- the answer (TIF file) is that the Cabinet Office does not hold the information.

This is rather surprising, particularly the claim that the Cabinet Office has no information, no record, of who was at either meeting. However, it is known that at least two spin doctors were at these meetings. The first was where the 45 minutes claim was added to the dossier. The second was where it was "decided" that the claim should maintain the status of "judgement", in spite of objections from the Defence Intelligence Staff. Despite its insistence that these were decisions by the intelligence services, the government is admitting/claiming that it has no actual record of who said what.