Regulating health and social care: a meeting of minds?

In the course of a working life, there are some meetings that constructively move an agenda forward, and other discussions from which one is quite content to be excluded. The description in this magazine's policy column, ‘Regulation, confusion and career moves for Sir Nigel Crisp’ (Timmins 2005), of meetings in ‘smokefilled rooms’ about the future of health regulation sounds very much like an example of the latter!