New healthcare watchdog boss 'needs experience on NHS frontline'

Exclusive: Health select committee MPs worry Peter Wyman is not yet qualified to chair the health and social care regulator

Peter Wyman claims he grew up in the NHS. His parents were clinicians

The incoming chairman of the health and social care regulator has been told to get experience on the NHS frontline before he takes up the job.

MPs on the health select committee are worried that most of Peter Wyman’s experience has been limited to accountancy. Until 2010 he was a bean counter at PricewaterhouseCoopers; before that, he advised John Major’s government on tax and deregulation.

Mr Wyman, a member of the Conservative Party, was quizzed by the committee last week on his forthcoming appointment as chairman at the Care Quality Commission, which makes sure that patients in England are provided with safe and compassionate care. Although he has been chairman at Yeovil District Hospital since June 2011, MPs were concerned that he had not held a frontline clinical role.

Dr Philippa Whitford, a SNP MP, dismissed his claim that he “kind of grew up in the NHS” because his father was a doctor and his mother a nurse. She said she was not sure that counted as a qualification to run the CQC. It is understood that the committee’s report on the appointment will recommend he spends time with patients or shadowing a doctor. However, not all MPs are believed to have been convinced that he could gather the requisite understanding of frontline healthcare.

Mr Wyman admitted that he had been a member of the Conservatives for “many years”. Another company he chairs, Sir Richard Sutton Estates, has made donations to the party, but Mr Wyman said his support “has had no bearing ever on anything I have done in public life”.

Paula Sherriff, who worked for the NHS before becoming an MP this year, told this paper that she was worried that a Conservative supporter would not be willing to stand up to reforms of the NHS that could affect the CQC.

She said: “Ideally, [the Health Secretary] Jeremy Hunt would not be appointing someone who has membership of any party, as there could be conflicts of interest. I’m just cynical [of a Conservative-backing appointment] because of the challenges the NHS faces right now. For me, he didn’t have nearly enough of the right experience for the job.”

Mr Hunt will have to formally approve Mr Wyman’s role, which comes at a delicate time – the CQC recently found that three-quarters of trusts it visited had safety issues.

Mr Wyman said last night: “I do not think it appropriate for me to [comment] while the appointment process is ongoing.”