We were part of briefings that took place after the first of the nine negotiating rounds. These were briefing sessions held with many different groups, academics, and NGOs. We felt that they were mostly one-way communications. Of course there was an opportunity to ask questions, and it was quite a useful exercise to some extent, but it wasn't a consultation in the sense that there was no way to determine if the input groups were providing was being taken into consideration.
I'm not sure if I mentioned this in November 2011—I don't think I did—but we were told that, in fact, the input was not being recorded and there were no minutes taken of those briefing sessions. We felt they weren't really consultations in the strict sense, and we would argue that they weren't happening in a very public way. When we think of public consultations, we think they should be accessible to more people than are perhaps on those telephone calls.