Civil Service World with access to top Whitehall officials and national politicians reports that the appointment of two businessmen who collectively donated more than £1m to the Conservative Party to key public health roles has stirred up fresh claims of rampant cronyism in public appointments.

Oluwole Kolade was appointed as a non-executive director and deputy chair of NHS England for three years on 31 March, while Simon Blagden was made a member of the UK Health Security Agency advisory board on 28 April.

Kolade has made donations totalling around £730,000 to the Conservative Party, including one to former London mayor candidate Simon Bailey, in the last seven years. He is also member of the so-called Leaders Group, where senior bosses make donations of at least £50,000 to have dinners with Tory Cabinet Ministers.

He is a managing partner of Livingbridge, a private equity firm which says it “has made a private equity investment in the healthcare and education sector in almost every single year for the past two decades”.

Blagden and the companies he is associated with – including Pietas, where he was director from 2000-2020, and Avre Partnership, which he has been director of since 2014 – have donated more than £370,000 to the Tories since 2015.

Blagden was already chair of the telecoms supply chain diversification advisory council at the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport. He is also chair of Fujitsu UK, which sued DHSC’s predecessor, the Department of Health, for £700m over a failed IT project terminated in 2008. According to a number of reports, the IT firm that sued the government for its own poor work also supplied the faulty equipment that saw innocent workers jailed for theft. How were they rewarded? With more state contracts.

Shadow health minister Andrew Gwynne told the Guardian Kolade’s appointment looked like “naked Conservative cronyism” and called on health secretary Sajid Javid to “come clean about what guarantees he secured that this position won’t be used to benefit private interests over public health”.

It is needless to say that the DHSC and UKHSA say all government protocols were followed in making the appointments.