Lacking Integrity

Here's another remarkable story on the still unfolding NHS 'watchdog' scandal - which tells the curious tale of Jill Finney's appointment to a highly paid and senior position at the CQC - while her husband was in the process of setting up the body.

Now even the 'village idiot' could tell you that this doesn't look good - in fact it stinks to high heaven and says a lot about the way the NHS is run these days.

The problem with the NHS is not that it lacks money or resources - the problem is that it is run as a giant bureaucracy which pays too much attention to the views of those it employs - especially people at the top.

While far too little attention is paid to the actual experience of the customers (patients) whom the NHS is supposed to serve - which means that in key areas its values are all 'shot to hell'.

To my mind this might help to explain why people like Jill Finney - along with Cynthia Bowers (the former CQC chief executive) and Dame Jo Williams (the former CQC Chair) - manage to get appointed to such influential and well paid jobs.  

So it's hardly suprising that leadership, selflessness and integrity are in such short supply.  

Wife who went from pasta PR to public enemy No 1 

By Dominic Kennedy

Jill Finney has come a long way from promoting pasta sauces to being the alleged author of a cover-up about baby deaths in a hospital.

She was appointed to a highly paid job at the Care Quality Commission at a time when her husband was setting up the regulator. It denied that he helped her to get the job.

She has no obvious qualifications in care or regulation, having devoted decades of a marketing career to improving the image of spaghetti and schmoozing clients for chartered accountants. Yesterday she was sacked by her new employer, the internet domains registry Nominet.

Ms Finney, 54, was appointed the £140,000-a-year director of engagement for the CQC in February 2009 after spending eight years as director of strategic marketing and communications at the British Library.

Although she was married to David Lane, the CQC’s transition director, the organisation said that he was not involved in the recruitment process.

There appears to have been resentment about the couple from the start. Staff in the three health and social care watchdogs that were merged into the CQC complained that they were kept in the dark about their fate, the Health Service Journal reported.

Ms Finney’s early forays into the world of marketing were in the unglamorous worlds of cash-and-carries and frozen foods. She worked for Rank Hovis McDougall and then for the caterer CPC, where, in 1987, she shared her thoughts on wasted opportunities for marketing pasta with The Grocer.

“In the wholesale sector there are large volumes of macaroni and spaghetti and distinct evidence that pasta is treated as a commodity product,” she lamented.

Ms Finney moved on to building customer loyalty for blue-chip accountants when she became corporate marketing director for Ernst & Young.

There she helped to pour millions in sponsorship into the 1999 blockbuster Monet exhibition at the Royal Academy. In return the accountants enjoyed exclusive VIP access to the Impressionist’s oil paintings.

She became the British Library’s first marketing director in 2001, again with responsibility for enhancing the brand. Promotional events she organised included inviting Ralph Fiennes to do a poetry reading.

Although she was appointed director of engagement at the CQC, a reorganisation the following year saw her acquire the grander post of director of strategic marketing and communications. She later added the role of deputy chief executive to her title. Her generous pension pot stood at £95,000 after only three years.

Presented with a critical report about the CQC’s handling of mother and baby hospital deaths, Ms Finney was alleged to have said “read my lips” and ordered it to be suppressed.

She allegedly stated that the report had to be deleted as it posed a risk to the CQC under the Freedom of Information Act, being negative and damaging. Ms Finney later told a review that she was “not sure” if she had given the order.

Her husband, now 57, was a consultant hired to set up the regulator. He owns a business called Foxlane Associates. In the year during which his wife was appointed to CQC, the business paid him £382,200 in dividends. The previous year it paid him £334,120.

She left the CQC at the end of March to become chief commercial officer of Nominet, which controls domain names. She was expected to be appointed to the board on July 22.

Instead she has been fired.

Nominet said yesterday: “The increasing public scrutiny over our CCO’s former role at CQC has made it impossible for her to continue with her role and responsibilities at Nominet.”

The couple’s home in Rickmansworth, Hertfordshire, is worth an estimated £800,000. Yesterday there was no sign of the couple.