Secrets in minutes

Diana Warwick, chief executive of the Committee of Vice Chancellors and Principals, is quoted by Tony Tysome as defending the secrecy surrounding the deliberations of the Joint Planning Group for Quality Assurance (THES, August 30) on the grounds that "there was pressure from various parts of the sector to keep our discussions confidential . . . There are also people's jobs at stake".

I would be interested to learn which "parts of the sector" pressed for secrecy; I know of none. It is true that, in general terms, the JPG has naturally discussed matters of job security. But nowhere in the set of minutes I have is any individual identified, even indirectly. This is at it should be.

It was not until the second meeting of the JPG (February 15 1996) that the confidentiality of its minutes was raised, when it was agreed that the minutes would be "confidential to members only". Yet an official of the Department for Education and Employment to whom I spoke in July, who is neither a member of the JPG nor an assessor at its meetings, admitted without embarrassment that he had read the minutes.

How (I wonder) did he come by them?

Geoffrey Alderman Academic development and quality assurance unit Middlesex University