The government has named its preferred candidate to become the next chair of the Care Quality Commission. James Murray, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, confirmed on Tuesday that Rabbi Baroness Julia Neuberger DBE is his choice to lead the regulator, subject to a pre-appointment hearing before the Health and Social Care Select Committee. The appointment was made without a formal open competition, a decision that has already drawn scrutiny from within the health and social care sector.

Neuberger brings a long record in public service and health policy to the role. A cross-bench peer since 2004, having entered the House of Lords on the Liberal Democrat benches before taking the independent whip, she chaired the Camden and Islington Community Health Services NHS Trust in the 1990s and served as chief executive of the King's Fund between 1997 and 2004. She has led two of the most consequential national reviews in recent NHS history: the 2013 independent review of the Liverpool Care Pathway, which examined how the end of life care protocol was being applied in hospitals, and the vice chairmanship of the 2017-18 independent review of the Mental Health Act. She currently chairs both University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and Whittington Health NHS Trust, giving her live operational exposure to the pressures facing acute and community providers. Her cross-bench status is central to the government's framing of the appointment, positioning her as a figure without party affiliation who can hold the regulator to account on its own terms rather than the government's.

The CQC is the independent regulator of health and social care in England, responsible for registering, inspecting and rating providers ranging from hospital trusts to care homes and GP surgeries. It arrives at this appointment in a weakened state. A review commissioned in 2024 described the organisation as failing, citing a single assessment framework that had left inspections delayed, inconsistent and disconnected from the realities providers face on the ground. The regulator's most recent permanent chair, Professor Sir Mike Richards, resigned in February after less than a year in post, having concluded that the scale of the turnaround required a longer commitment than he could offer. His departure came shortly after that of the chief executive, Sir Julian Hartley, who stepped down amid scrutiny of his previous leadership role at a trust under investigation over maternity failures. The regulator has been run since by an interim chief executive and an interim chair, leaving both of its most senior posts unsettled at a moment when ministers are relying on it to underpin public confidence in care standards.

It is against that backdrop that the decision to bypass open competition becomes significant. Under the Governance Code on Public Appointments, ministers retain scope to make a direct appointment in exceptional circumstances, but doing so departs from the default expectation of a competitive process and invites questions about precedent. The government's implicit case rests on urgency and continuity. Two of the CQC's top leadership posts have now turned over within the space of a year, the vacancy has already stretched on since February, and Neuberger's cross-bench standing and depth of experience with the exact reviews that exposed the organisation's failings make her a known quantity rather than an unknown risk. Critics within the sector are likely to press ministers on why a truncated or expedited competitive process was not considered instead, and public appointments watchdogs have historically taken a dim view of exceptions becoming habitual rather than rare. The Health and Social Care Select Committee, when it holds its pre-appointment hearing, is likely to ask Neuberger directly to defend the manner of her selection as well as her vision for the role, mindful that its own scrutiny is one of the few checks remaining on a process that skipped the usual open field.

That hearing is expected to take place in September. MPs will use the session to test Neuberger on her independence from government, her priorities for rebuilding the CQC's credibility with providers, and her approach to a workforce still absorbing successive changes at the top. Kay Boycott, a serving non-executive director of the CQC, will continue as interim chair in the meantime. Assuming the committee endorses the appointment, Neuberger would take over an organisation that ministers have publicly conceded is not yet the regulator's patients and the public need it to be, with responsibility for restoring an institution whose credibility problems predate her by several years and will not be resolved quickly by her arrival alone.