Anne was appointed Shadow Minister for Health in 2007, and in 2010 she was made Under-Secretary of State for Public Health in the new coalition government.

She became involved in politics in the early 1990s, though in the past she was a union steward for the Royal College of Nursing and involved in the National Childbirth Trust after that. Before being elected as an MP in 2005, Anne was a borough councillor for five years in Surrey.

Anne worked for the NHS for 25 years and has a wide range of experience within the NHS, including district nursing in hospital, working in research and supporting GPs and nurses working in palliative care. She also pioneered a scheme to look after people who were sent home early from hospital. Her last job in the NHS was to give medical advice to councils and housing associations.

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Dame Carol Black is the National Director for Health and Work, Chairman of the Nuffield Trust, President of the British Lung Foundation, and Pro-Chancellor at the University of Bristol. She is the immediate past-President of the Royal College of Physicians, and has recently stepped down as Chairman of the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges. The Centre she established at the Royal Free Hospital, London is internationally renowned in the field of connective tissue diseases.

Since the early-1990s she has worked at board level in a number of organisations, including the Royal Free Hospital Hampstead NHS Trust, the Health Foundation, the NHS Institute for Innovation and Improvement, and the Imperial College Healthcare Charity, and recently chaired the UK Health Honours Committee. She is a Trustee of the National Portrait Gallery, a member of the Committee for the Queen’s Awards for Voluntary Service, chairs the governance board of the new Centre for Workforce Intelligence, and is on several national committees aiming to improve healthcare. She is a Foreign Affiliate of the Institute of Medicine USA, and has been awarded many honorary degrees and fellowships.

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Peter Goldblatt is an advisor in the Department of Epidemiology and Public Health at University College London. Peter played a key role in the Health Inequalities Review for England team led by Sir Michael Marmot.

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Christopher Prinz is a Senior Economist in the Employment Analysis and Policies Division at the OECD, and is the lead author of the OECD’s Sickness, Disability and Work review.

Christopher is also leading a new OECD project on the particular challenges of mental health and work.

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Roy Sainsbury is a Research Director at the Social Policy Research Unit, University of York, where he specialises in research on social security, employment, sickness and disability, and welfare to work. Recent and ongoing projects include major evaluations of welfare to work programmes and pilots (including New Deal for Disabled People, and Pathways to Work), and research on mental health and employment.

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Alan Walker is Director of both the UK New Dynamics of Ageing Programme and the European Research Area in Ageing, also Professor of Social Policy and Social Gerontology at the University of Sheffield, UK.

Previously he was Director of the Economic and Social Research Council’s Growing Older Programme, the UK National Collaboration on Ageing Research and the European FORUM project. He is co-founder and Chair of the European Foundation on Social Quality. He was a member of the Technical Committee responsible for drafting the Revised UN Plan of Action on Ageing. Previously he chaired the European Commission’s Observatory on Ageing and Older People.

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David Brindle is public services editor of the Guardian. He has been the paper’s social affairs correspondent and edited the Society section. He has won awards for his coverage of social services, disability and nursing and was awarded the Social Care Association's merit award for 2007.

Previously he was labour correspondent of the Financial Times and he started his career with the Coventry Evening Telegraph. He is vice-chair of 2Care, a mental health service charity, and also of Mental Health Media, a charity working to improve understanding of mental ill-health and counter stigma. He is a visiting fellow at the Centre for Citizen Participation, Brunel University.

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