The actual HPC Council meeting, Feb 2009

The 30 minute meeting was extraordinary for the lack of debate and discussion. Not all of the papers had been ready before the meeting and a couple of them were handed out, one in particular was presented to the group and 5 minutes were designated for reading. This paper had been written by the Department of Health who are apparently all of a frenzy these days, and hadn't got there act together. The Council Members duly bent their heads to consider this important document. A lacklustre attempt to comment followed, and was met by a robust rebuttal from the resident lawyer.

This lawyer turns out to be none other than Jonathan Bracken, a partner at Bircham Dyson Bell. This is the man credited with writing the documents that brought the HPC to life (see blog below headed 'The Information Commissioner'): the Father of the organisation. He was in fine form, probably the only member of the meeting who hadn't just spent 5 hours in brainstorming future strategy and expansion. His joke related to another new short document, on which the increases in fees were written. This must pass through parliament. He informed the meeting that altho the document was just being handed round, in fact nothing on it had changed since their view of its draft. This of course was good, he quipped, except he might have liked to have seen the figures increase. He laughed "hahaha".