Samantha Jones, the Department of Health and Social Care's permanent secretary since June 2025, is facing demands from Labour and Liberal Democrat MPs to recuse herself from any role in the government's planned crackdown on private ADHD and autism clinics. The reason is straightforward: weeks before she started the job, a company she chaired, directed, and held shares in — Keys Group — acquired ADHD360, one of the UK's largest providers of NHS-funded neurodiversity assessments, for £22.5m. The timeline is tight and uncomfortable. Jones was appointed permanent secretary on 22 April. On 16 May, Keys Group — in which she was still chair, director, and shareholder — completed its purchase of ADHD360. Jones was also an operating partner at G Square Capital, the private equity firm that owns Keys Group. She resigned her private-sector roles and sold her shares in early June, before formally starting at the DHSC on 16 June. The department insists there is no conflict of interest. ADHD360 describes itself as the "leading UK-wide ADHD clinic" and has received just over £26m from the NHS since 2020, according to the Tussell public expenditure database. The company sits squarely in the crosshairs of the regulatory tightening Jones is now expected to oversee. Ministers accepted the findings of the Fonagy review last week, which flagged concerns about the "consistency and quality" of private neurodiversity assessments and the "financial incentives" baked into the diagnostic model. This is not Jones's first conflict-of-interest episode at the DHSC. She has already recused herself from decisions about Palantir's £330m NHS contract after MPs raised concerns about her prior work with Carnall Farrar, a health lobbying firm that advised Palantir. In June, the Civil Service Commission reprimanded her for breaching lobbying rules by failing to seek prior approval before taking paid roles at four healthcare companies. By 2023-24, she held paid roles or shareholdings in 13 health or consultancy organisations. Ben Coleman, a Labour MP on the Commons health and social care select committee, urged Jones to recuse herself "to avoid any perception of a conflict of interest." Helen Morgan, the Liberal Democrats' health spokesperson, went further: "It shouldn't take investigative reporting for the health secretary to get a grip on basic propriety." The DHSC's position — that Jones "appropriately declared all interests" and resigned before taking the role — treats the issue as a compliance checkbox rather than a structural governance problem. The core issue is not whether Jones broke any rules. It is whether the person responsible for implementing a regulatory crackdown on an industry she was financially embedded in weeks earlier can credibly do so. The Fonagy review identified systemic financial incentives distorting private ADHD diagnosis — the same incentive structures that made ADHD360 valuable enough for Keys Group to pay £22.5m for it. Jones's ally calls her link to ADHD360 "very tenuous." A £22.5m acquisition completed while she held shares, a chair position, and a directorship in the acquiring company is not tenuous. Health Secretary Yvette Cooper has pledged a "much tougher regime" for the private neurodiversity sector. The credibility of that regime now depends on whether the person overseeing its design is seen as independent of the industry being regulated. The department's refusal to acknowledge any tension between Jones's recent financial interests and her current regulatory responsibilities is itself a governance failure — one that hands ammunition to anyone who wants to argue the crackdown is performative.
