Top health civil servant urged to play no role in clampdown on ADHD clinics

Four MPs raise conflict of interest concerns over Samantha Jones’s past links to a big provider of ADHD assessments

A senior civil servant should play no part in ministers’ crackdown on private ADHD and autism clinics because of her recent ties to the industry, MPs have said.

Labour and Liberal Democrat MPs are demanding that Samantha Jones, permanent secretary at the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC), steps away from any role in plans to toughen regulation of the booming market in private neurodiversity assessments.

They say Jones should not be involved because of her links to a company that is one of the biggest providers of NHS-funded neurodiversity assessments, which earned it £26m from the health service in England over the past six years.

Ministers are drawing up plans for how to better regulate the “wild west” of private clinics offering assessment, diagnosis and treatment of ADHD and autism that has grown rapidly in recent years as people have struggled to access care via the NHS.

The push comes after the government last week accepted the findings of a review by Prof Peter Fonagy, which raised concerns about the “consistency and quality” of assessments by private providers of neurodiversity services that had inbuilt “financial incentives” to diagnose and treat people.

Jones is responsible for overseeing the implementation of government decisions on health policy. She would therefore be expected to advise ministers on how best to strengthen the regulation of private providers of ADHD and autism services. Yvette Cooper, the health secretary, has pledged to introduce a much tougher regime.

Four MPs have called for Jones to recuse herself from any role in those decisions because of her previous ties to ADHD360 , a major provider of neurodiversity services. Her links to the private ADHD sector represent a serious conflict of interest, they claim.

Jones was appointed as the permanent secretary on 22 April 2025. A month later, she was still the chair of and a director of and shareholder in the private care provider Keys Group when, on 16 May, it bought ADHD360, a clinic that has increased its NHS income considerably in recent years.

At the time of the £22.5m purchase, Jones was also an operating partner in G Square Capital , the private equity company that owns Keys Group.

She sold her shares in Keys Group and resigned her roles there and at G Square Capital before she started at the DHSC on 16 June. Jones has already recused herself from involvement in the department’s decision over whether to extend Palantir’s £330m, seven-year contract with the NHS because of her past work for the lobbyists Carnall Farrar, which advised Palantir regarding the contract.

MPs believe her tenure at Keys Group could represent a conflict of interest. Ben Coleman, a Labour MP on the health and social care committee, said: “People will want to feel reassured that future regulation of private ADHD and autism assessments is beyond reproach. Given her recent close involvement with ADHD360, I would encourage Ms Jones to recuse herself from that work, as she has done over Palantir, to avoid any perception of a conflict of interest.”

In June, Jones apologised after she was reprimanded by the Civil Service Commission for breaching lobbying rules by failing to ask the (now defunct) Advisory Committee on Business Appointments for prior approval before undertaking work for four healthcare companies.

Helen Morgan, the Liberal Democrats’ health spokesperson, said: “Given Sam Jones oversaw the multimillion-pound acquisition of ADHD360 just weeks before entering the Department of Health, ministers must ensure she recuses herself immediately, just as she has over Palantir.”

Jones, 55, was widely admired in the NHS when she ran West Hertfordshire NHS trust in 2013-15. After a role with NHS England, she began working in private healthcare. Boris Johnson as prime minister handed her a key role in Downing Street in 2021. She returned to private health in 2023 and by 2023-24 had paid roles or shareholdings in 13 health or consultancy organisations.

Clive Lewis, the Labour MP for Norwich South, said Jones’s deep involvement in private healthcare meant she should not have been made DHSC permanent secretary in the first place, saying: “It just defies logic that anyone thought it was a good idea. Surely this must have come up during her recruitment process?”

Jones did not answer questions put by the Guardian. The NHS has paid ADHD360 just over £26m for its services since 2020, according to figures supplied by the Tussell public expenditure database. “When it comes to the government’s response to the [Fonagy] review, there should be no suggestion that the top NHS official is being influenced by any past or current links to a major private provider of NHS ADHD services,” said Stella Creasy, Labour MP for Walthamstow. “This issue is too sensitive and complex to permit any conflicts of interest. As a result the permanent secretary should recuse herself from this area of policy.”

David Rowland, the director of the Centre for Health and the Public Interest thinktank, said: “The permanent secretary at the department which has responsibility for regulating private ADHD providers appears to have a conflict of interest in this area and so may struggle to remain impartial when it comes to implementing the recommendations made by Prof Fonagy.”

A DHSC spokesperson said: “There is no conflict of interest. The permanent secretary has appropriately declared all interests, in this post and when she was a non-executive director [of the DHSC]. She resigned from all her private-sector posts before taking on the permanent secretary role at the department.”