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These dreadful events in s Staffs occurred while the HCC was the regulator (not the SHA) - are they simply trying to shift the blame to someone else? Or is this about the HCC demonstrating the Monitor isn't up to the job? Or just that they are so good that they shouldn't have been replaced by the CQC? This all looks like power games / retaliation at the top. It is sickening that patients and front-line staff at NHS hospitals are regarded simply as tokens in a game.

Anyone who knows Cynthia Bower knows she is not interested in this stuff but is motivated to cut through the red tape and improve services for patients. The thought that she is part of an old boy network could not be further from the truth. If she had been, she would have risen faster and further in NHS management and been a Dame by now.

At the CQC she will be a fearless regulator, outside the tottering bureaucracy of the NHS and I bet her record will stand comparison with the HCC. I expect this will not win her many friends but she will do it anyway. The supposition by the opposition that this is a party political appointment is laughable.