Health select committee chairman resigns
pharmafile | June 3, 2014 | News story | Medical Communications, Sales and Marketing | Conservative, NHS, Stephen Dorrell, health secretary, lankly, reforms
The Conservative MP for Charnwood Stephen Dorrell who has chaired the health select committee since 2010, has resigned.
The unexpected news was released this morning by fellow committee member Dr Sarah Wollaston, who said on Twitter: “Stephen Dorrell has been an outstanding Health Select Committee Chair, I’m sorry to hear he is standing down as chair with immediate effect.”
His reason for quitting was outlined in a letter to Commons speaker John Bercow the BBC reports, which states Dorrell saying he wants to contribute to debate on the health service in the run-up to the 2015 election from a ‘less overtly political position’.
The letter describes how Dorrell had tried to chair the committee “in a way which emphasises the broad measure of agreement which (he) believes exists across party divisions on the key objectives of health policy”.
It goes on to say: “In a pre-election period, I can make a more effective contribution developing this thought process from a less overtly political position.”
Dorrell served in the cabinet of John Major as secretary of state for National Heritage in the mid 90s, before becoming the health secretary up until 1997. He also launched a bid for Conservative leadership that year but withdrew due to a lack of support from fellow MPs.
Under Conservative leader William Hague he became shadow secretary of state for education and employment, but left the shadow cabinet in 1998 to remain as a backbencher.
When David Cameron came to power at the end of 2005, Dorrell was appointed co-chairman of the Public Service Improvement policy group. Then in the summer of 2010 Dorrell was elected chairman of the health select committee.
The following year concerns around Andrew Lansley’s NHS reforms even saw Dorrell tipped as a possible successor, but he stated that he wanted to continue as the committee chairman.
According to the New Statesman although Dorrell voted the controversial reforms through, he dismissed the debate as ‘grotesquely overstated on both sides’, and argued that efficiency savings in the health service were more pressing than the Health and Social Care Bill, and that the subject of NHS reform had ‘lost touch with reality’.
Last year Dorrell was reported in Pharmafile saying the NHS must be ‘re-imagined’, adding: “the only way to sustain or improve present service levels in the NHS will be to focus on a transformation of care through genuine and sustained service integration.”
As the New Statesman speculates, if his reason for standing down is truly for a less political outlook, it is unlikely that his approach to the healthcare debate will change much.
Brett Wells
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