Health Policy InsightEditor's blog Tuesday 24 May 2011: Professor Steve Field's private meeting this morning with the Health Select Committee
Professor Steve Field, chair of the listening pause, had a private meeting this morning with members of the House Of Commons Health Select Committee, which was not listed on the committee website.
I learned about this meeting from a tweet from Labour MP and committee member Grahame Morris.
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A private meeting of the Health Select Committee seemed intriguing.
And it was later raised on The Guardian LiveBlog, via Valerie Vaz MP, another Labour committee member.
Vaz's concerns, as reported by The Guardian, were that the session should have been public and that there was a lack of clarity over whether Field is working for the DH.
I found this intriguing, and did a little digging. And so got to have a quick word with health select committee chair Stephen Dorrell MP, who told me the following:
"It was not the DH who asked for this meeting to be private. The Health Select Committee clerk went through the normal process of asking Professor Field to attend - Steve Field doesn't work for the DH, but he does have DH secretarial support - so our committee clerk went through the DH Parliamentary clerk.
"And we got an answer discouraging anything happening prior to the Prime Minister receiving Professor Field's report (and he's entitled to expect to see it first).
"I know Steve Field of old, so I rang him. He said he'd rather not come for a public session, as he felt the Health Select Committee had made its views clear in our recent reports on commissioning. But he was quite happy to come and listen to committee members' views in private.
"And given the choice, and the fact that the committee has 11 sensible people who are very interested in this subject, that seemed sensible".
I asked Mr Dorrell if he was disappointed that the meeting seemed to have become party political. He replied, "I don't think it was party political: some committee members decided they didn't want to take part. Two Labour members decided to leave, and two stayed. The fifth Labour member wasn't present, and I don't know her view".