Nick Bosanquet is Professor of Health Policy at Imperial College, Chairman of Volterra Health, and a founder member of the Centre for Health Economics at the University of York. Other posts include Non-Executive Director at Richmond and Twickenham PCT from 2001-07, member of DH Advisory Board on a Reform Cancer Strategy, and Chairman of its costs and benefits sub-committee.

Publications include Family Doctors and Economic Incentives (with B. Leese) and The Economics of Cancer Care.


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Stephen Dorrell was personal assistant to Peter Walker MP at Worcester in the February 1974 General Election. He contested Hull East in the October 1974 General Election.

He was adopted as Prospective Conservative Parliamentary Candidate for Loughborough in March 1976 and elected as the first Conservative Member of Parliament for Loughborough since 1945 in the General Election in May 1979. Between May 1979 and June 1983 he was the youngest member of the House of Commons.

From June 1983 to June 1987, he served as Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Secretary of State for Energy, the Rt Hon Peter Walker MP.

In June 1987, he was appointed an Assistant Government Whip and became a Lord Commissioner of HM Treasury (a senior Government Whip) in December 1988. From May 1990 to April 1992, he was Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the Department of Health. In April 1992, he was appointed Financial Secretary to the Treasury.

Stephen was Secretary of State for National Heritage from July 1994 to July 1995 and Secretary of State for Health from July 1995 to March 1997.

In the 1997 General Election, he won the new seat of Charnwood with a majority of 5,900, and subsequently served as Shadow Secretary of State for Education and Employment. In June 1998, he left the Shadow Cabinet to return to the backbenches.

From 2006 to 2007 he was Co-Chair of the Public Service Improvement Group, established by David Cameron to review policy in education, health, social care and housing.

In June 2010 Stephen was elected as the Chair of the Health Select Committee.

Presentation: The economic imperative for reform

The main priority for the NHS remains the unprecedented financial issues it is facing. Maintaining the momentum of the reform agenda whilst focusing on the £20bn of productivity gains demanded by the QIPP programme is a major challenge, and patients and clinicians must be enlisted in order to drive through the revolutionary changes needed.

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Jeff Zitron is Chair of NHS North West London, the board that oversees the work of the eight borough-based PCTs in North West London.

Jeff has worked in housing and regeneration for most of his career, advising on the funding and delivery of major investment projects. He has also written or co-written 15 books on housing and public policy.

He is Chair of a housing association, a director of several commercial companies working in the public and community services sectors, and a board member of a non-profit housing management organisation.

Jeff first joined Hammersmith and Fulham PCT Board in April 2007 and was appointed Chair of that PCT on 1 December 2007.

Jeff is also Chair of the Outer and Inner sub-cluster boards.

Presentation: Managing the transition

Maintaining and improving quality during the transition to the new, restructured NHS is an unprecedented challenge. PCT clusters have been created in order to sustain focus on this challenge, keeping a particularly tight grip on finance, performance and quality in order to hand over a strong platform to commissioning consortia.

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Mike Smith - MBBS DPH FFPH DRCOG - is one of the UK's leading media doctors. As a doctor, broadcaster and writer, he regularly appears on TV, radio and in print.

He has long been and remains a regular spokesperson for organisations - both commercial and charitable. As well as speaking for such organisations, he also writes for them, again explaining potentially complicated medical/scientific subjects in ways that make them widely understandable.

Mike is perhaps best known for his extensive work in radio and has appeared on nearly all national, local and commercial radio stations throughout the UK. For more than a quarter of a century he had a regular, fortnightly, hour-plus spot on lunch-time BBC radio 2.

Mike was voted the TV & Radio Doctors' 'Expert's Expert' in the Observer magazine and was described as the Acknowledged Master of radio doctoring. Doctor magazine called him the Doyen of the media doctors and the British Medical Journal referred to him as '..the Big Daddy media doc of them all..'.

Presentation: Putting patients first

The NHS reforms purport to put patients at the heart of the NHS, giving them greater choice and control. This session will explore the progress the government has made in fulfilling this commitment, identifying examples of good and not-so-good practice, and suggesting options for even greater patient engagement.

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Stephen Bubb is Chief Executive of the Association of Chief Executives of Voluntary Organisations (ACEVO) – a dynamic and high profile UK body – where his work on leadership, sector funding and public service reform has radically shifted attitudes and policies. In 2007 he became Secretary General of Euclid Network, the European body for Third Sector leaders. He is the Chair of the Social Investment Business, the largest social investor in the UK. He is a member of The Commonwealth Foundation's Civil Society Committee, a Director of the Big Society Trust and of the Transitions Institute. He received a knighthood in the New Year's Honours, 2011.

In 2011 Stephen was asked by the Prime Minister to conduct a review into choice and competition in the NHS. He has been in major national roles in the TGWU, NUT and the AMA (Association of Metropolitan Authorities) and was Founding Personnel Director of the National Lottery Charities Board. He was a Councillor in Lambeth and an active member of the health authorities for Guys and St Thomas' over two decades. Stephen is much in demand as a speaker and media commentator both here and abroad promoting the country's Third Sector. His Bubb's Blog (http://bloggerbubb.blogspot.com/) is the most widely read in the sector and is part of the national blog archive.

Born and brought up in Kent, Stephen read PPE at Christ Church, Oxford. He lives in Lambeth and in Charlbury in the Cotswolds. He has been a Youth Court Magistrate, Open University Tutor, non-Executive Director in the private sector, Chair of an Orchestra and Founder of a Charity.


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Dr Hamish Meldrum has been Chairman of BMA Council since June 2007.

He graduated from Edinburgh in 1972 and began his medical career in general medicine, spending three years as a medical SHO and medical registrar in Torbay Hospital, Devon, before moving to general practice in Bridlington, East Yorkshire, where he was a GP for over 30 years.

Hamish was involved in local hospital management and in the Local Medical Committee (LMC) in the 1980s, before joining the General Practitioners Committee (GPC) in 1991 following the imposition of the Kenneth Clarke (the then Secretary of State for Health) contract. He was Chairman of East Yorkshire LMC from 1996-1999.

He was part of the GPC team that negotiated the new GP contract, being Deputy Chairman from 1999-2004 and Chairman of the GPC from 2004-2007.

Hamish is a Fellow of the Royal College of General Practitioners and of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.


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