Further to recent posts about the amount of public funding awarded to ASH since 2018, I was reminded yesterday of this.
On December 14, 2015, Guido Fawkes revealed that:
Bury North MP David Nuttall has forced health minister Jane Ellison to admit the fanatical anti smoking campaigners ASH wrote a whopping 592 letters to the Department of Health - more than twice a week - during the last parliament.
Nuttall did well to prise that information from government because whenever I’ve tried to get similar information I’ve usually hit a brick wall, as I explained here.
Anyway, after losing her seat in 2017 Ellison moved to Geneva where she worked for the World Health Organisation for five years.
She resigned as Executive Director for External Relations and Governance, a position she had held since January 2020, last month so it will be interesting to see what she does next.
Still in post (to the best of my knowledge) is Andrew Black, former tobacco programme lead at the Department of Health who also swapped Westminster for Geneva when he became Team Leader (Development Assistance) at the Secretariat of the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control.
Does Black still get letters from ASH? It wouldn’t surprise me. There’s no escaping some people.
