Oh what a circus
Next week Forest is hosting a No Smoking Day webinar on tobacco control and the Government’s goal of England being ‘smoke free’ by 2030.
I wrote last week about the difficulty of getting MPs and peers to reply to invitations to take part. In fact I’ve lost count of the number of parliamentarians I’ve written to without getting a response - and that’s just in the last few weeks.
One MP - whose interest in the Government’s Tobacco Control Plan, to be published in July, is evident from the number of parliamentary questions he has asked on the subject - failed to reply to three emails and two phone calls, one to his Westminster office, the other to his constituency office.
This week however I encountered a new and unexpected obstacle. This is the reply I got from someone who works for a left of centre think tank. After reading my invitation and seeing our provisional panel of speakers, he wrote:
Thank you for thinking of me. I will have to decline on this occasion - [our] policy is not to speak on all male panels.
Aarrgghh!
To be fair, he responded very quickly and I sort of understand their position. In a perfect world our panel would include several women. It’s certainly not for want of trying.
The problem is this. We’ve invited numerous women to speak - MPs, peers, even a former junior health minister no longer in Parliament - and only two of them replied. (They both declined.)
As a result we ended up - not through choice - with an all male panel and because of that we’ve been turned down by a public health 'expert' who would have helped balance the panel, not in terms of gender but certainly with regard to the actual debate.
Doh!
Update: Good news! We have a woman on our panel! Step forward confirmed smoker and friend of Forest Liz Barber.
What we need now is a female anti-smoking campaigner. I can think of plenty - Deborah Arnott, Sheila Duffy, Ailsa Rutter and Linda Bauld to name a few - but what are the odds on even one agreeing to take part?
Fortunately we’ve still got an interesting and diverse panel. For details - and to register - click here.