I think this was solely down to the DecodeME study - a bright shiny bauble of cutting edge research which is the kind of thing Javid would see as important, I doubt that ME/CFS itself was particularly of interest although there might have been some thought around distancing the SoS from the controversy of the Guideline delay. I wouldn't interpret this one off as a major change within the Department, more like the Queen coming to visit a School - it gives kudos by association but only fleetingly.
Equally the absence of any BPS presence, while it gives a nice schadenfreude hit for us, may only be circumstantial - they simply have no irons in the tech heavy research fires that excite politicians. It's a measure of how BPS star is falling but not that the BPS crowd has been consigned to the outer darkness; for example if the costs of Long Covid become too monstrous then BPS sponsored victim blaming may once again become politically useful.
Of course Javid's interest is a good thing but there is an element for us of a hostage to fortune - ME/CFS is politically important so long as it is the subject of big money research but that leaves us with two problems, first the money stream has to be kept going, which in turn depends on results, second actually helping patients may rely on a lot of mundane science slog which also needs funding. So best remember that politicians are often fickle, that their interest may be self serving and as individuals their presence may be short lived.
