The Jeremy Hunt event: what really happened…
As you can imagine a lot of preparation goes into organising each Cambridge Health Network event, so when you get the news a couple of days before an event that your keynote speaker cannot attend the fear sets in, but then you have to act fast.
Our annual event with the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, Jeremy Hunt, was due to be held at our sponsor Deloitte’s offices. This had to be confirmed nine months in advance to secure time in Hunt’s busy diary. However, the Government had other ideas, calling a three-line whip on the day of our event. This meant the Secretary of State was unable to leave the Parliamentary Estate.
This left us in a bit of a predicament – to say the least – as we had a large number of members signed up and looking forward to the event.
With help from ZPB Associates and their contacts in Parliament we were able to pull the event out of the bag, as they were able to get hold of a magnificent committee room in the House of Commons. We even managed to squeeze in some networking beforehand.
We are very grateful to the Secretary of State for making the effort to speak to us following a gruelling day, which included a grilling at Cabinet and a turn in front of the Health Select Committee.
More than 140 members attended, which is a great turn out considering the change of time and location at such late notice.
Due to the nature of the topics the Secretary of State was covering it was decided it would be a closed event, however, our audience loved the intimate setting of the event, here is some of the great feedback we’ve had to tease those who weren’t able to make it:
- “It was a great event. Good speech and good networking too.”
- “Thank you for such a great event! I can honestly say I haven’t been to an event at the US Capitol so this was quite a treat.”
- “It was an interesting event!”