When Mountbatten later undertook an inquiry into prison security, following a number of highly publicized escapes from jail, he asked that Woodfield be assigned to it as its secretary.
Woodfield was then promoted to be Under-Secretary in the Prison Department of the Home Office, charged with the responsibility of implementing the recommendations of the commission that had been accepted by the Secretary of State, Roy Jenkins.
In his role at the Northern Ireland Office Woodfield participated in what is now believed to have been the first meeting between the Irish Republican Army and senior officials of the British Government.
The meeting place on 20 June 1972 in extreme secrecy at a house owned by Colonel Sir Michael McCorkell at Ballyarnett, near Derry's border with County Donegal.
Woodfield and Steele also represented the British Government at that meeting, along with William Whitelaw, Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, and Paul Channon, a millionaire Guinness heir and minister of state at the Northern Ireland Office; the IRA was again represented by Adams and Ó Conaill, along with Seán MacStiofáin, the leader of the delegation, Séamus Twomey, Martin McGuinness, Ivor Bell, and Myles Shevlin, a solicitor.