Sir Kenneth Calman obituary

Chief medical officer for England who advised on the BSE outbreak and later chaired the Commission on Scottish Devolution

Sir Kenneth Calman was a doctor, public servant and academic leader whose identity as a proud Scot underpinned his values of compassion, ethics and hard work. In the 1970s, as the University of Glasgow’s first professor of oncology, Calman, who has died aged 83, set up networks of cancer patients who could share their experience of living with the disease and its treatment with fellow sufferers and medical practitioners. Later, as chief medical officer for England, 1991-98, he advised the UK government on the risks to human health during the bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) outbreak.

Demonstrating his skill at handling contentious issues, from 2007 until 2009 Calman chaired the Commission on Scottish Devolution – known as the Calman commission – which had been set up by Scottish Labour and the other minority unionist parties in the Scottish parliament against opposition from the ruling Scottish National party. Its report was published in 2009, and its recommendations, described as “significant but gentle surgery on the body politic” by BBC Scotland’s political correspondent Andrew Kerr, were largely incorporated into the Scotland Act of 2012.