FRANK Dobson will draw back the veil on his years as Health Secretary in Tony Blair’s Labour Government in a York lecture next month.

The York-born former MP will tell why it was necessary to resist Viagra being provided by the NHS, and how he brought forward Meningitis C vaccines and protected blood supplies from vCJD.

Mr Dobson, who was Health Secretary from May 1997 until October 1999, is to give a free lecture at the Tempest Anderson Hall in the Museum Gardens at 7.30pm on Tuesday, November 1.

The lecture, entitled Decisions, Decisions! Science, Budgets and Bother: VCJD and blood; Viagra; MMR and Autism, is being organised by the Yorkshire Philosophical Society as part of an annual series of public lectures on scientific, archaeological, social and historical themes.

Society clerk Frances Chambers said:”He will draw back the veil on decisions involving the Prime Minister, Chancellor, other ministers, medical and scientific advisors, drug companies and patient groups in the face of funding problems and conflicting official advice.

“His presentation will include how the Meningitis C vaccination scheme was brought forward a year despite ‘nothing in the budget’ and how proposals that Hull/York and other new medical schools should be ‘cut-price’ institutions were resisted.”

She said he would also reveal how his £100 million decision to leucodeplete the blood supply to protect from vCJD, recently described as ‘prescient’, was taken against prevailing scientific views, and say why the response to the false claim that MMR caused autism was neither prompt nor effective and why it was necessary to resist Viagra on the NHS.

He would also tell how, despite personal reservations, he agreed the concentration of children’s intensive care in specialist units, including Leeds Infirmary, and how NHS Direct was first launched in just three pilot schemes.

“Mr Dobson regards setting up the National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE) as his most far-reaching decision and emphasizes the contribution of work at the University of York to its success,” she said.

She added that all were welcome at the lecture, with no advance booking needed.