UK Parliament: ME/CFS Announcements: Statement by Health Secretary Sajid Javid, 12 May 2022

Ed Argar, Health Minister, has resigned.
Wonder if he is involved in the work on ME.

https://www.gov.uk/government/people/edward-argar


Biography


Edward Argar was appointed Minister of State at the Department of Health and Social Care on 10 September 2019.

Edward was previously Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the Ministry of Justice between 14 June 2018 and 10 September 2019.

He was elected as Conservative MP for Charnwood in 2015.

Minister of State (Minister for Health)
The Minister of State for Health leads on the following:

• NHS operational performance
• NHS workforce
• Long Term Plan Bill
• finance, efficiency and commercial
• NHS capital, land and estates
• transformation
• NHS England mandate
• devolved administrations, Crown Dependencies and Overseas Territories
• secondary legislation
• departmental management
• EU future relationship and trade
• sponsorship of:
  • NHS England (NHSE)
  • NHS Improvement (NHSI)
  • Health Education England (HEE)
  • NHS Counter Fraud Authority (NHSCFA)

 

That is exactly right. To quote from the UK Parliament website:

"All-Party Parliamentary Groups (APPGs) are informal cross-party groups that have no official status within Parliament. They are run by and for Members of the Commons and Lords, though many choose to involve individuals and organisations from outside Parliament in their administration and activities."

A further thing to note is that all APPGs cease to exist at the point an election is called.

It does need one or more organisations to make contact with the Party spokespersons - and in the case of the Government the current Health Secretary. Caution is necessary in being politically neutral so in broad outline the same letter has to go to all Parties asking the same thing. In this case the ask is fairly simple - to support the initiative started by the former Health Secretary.

As far as timing goes - things remain febrile in the UK Government (as at 11.26 am !) but it now seems certain that the ruling Party will choose a new leader and therefore Prime Minister (i.e no General Election) and that by September there will be a wholly new Cabinet which may or may not include the current Health Secretary. It would seem wise to wait until then before contacting the new HS and the opposition Party spokespersons regarding continued support for Javid's initiative.

Encouraging the UK patient orgs to have their (hopefully collective) response ready to go in September would be good for anyone reading here with appropriate connections.

Just to add a further complication - Javid's initiative is about the NHS in England, with Scotland (via Carol Monaghan's influence) seeming to embrace similar principles. As far as I'm aware Wales and Northern Ireland are yet to clarify their respective post NICE updates positions on ME/CFS. NI is in political stalemate so lack of progress is for the present locked in.

 

Those replies are normally provided by (uncaring) Departmental officials/civil servants - they probably/maybe get checked by the Ministers "minder" (SPAD) before they issue. With Sajid Javid, AKA a Minister with a personal interest, the replies would be more likely to commit to action --- if the Minister's not personally interested then e.g.:

• I'd suggest the line of attack might be to focus on NICE's findings that all previous research funded by his Department was low/very low quality (any Minister doesn't want to look like he's the leader of an incompetent Department!). OR
• highlight his predecessor's commitments to turn things around (by implication this suggests that things were wrong).

Sure there are other/better strategies of course!

 

Not keeping up (as usual!) can someone send me a link to Javid's initiative (vaguely recall something about it).

Thanks in advance

 

Precisely and presumably we'll need the key charities (like Forward ME?) and APPG (even the covid APPG) to lobby to get +ve recommendations implemented.