Professor Sir Michael Adrian Richards, CBE, MD, DSc (Hon), FRCP (born 14 July 1951) is a British oncologist. From 1999 to 2013 he was the National Cancer Director in the UK Government's Department of Health. He was appointed to be the Chief Inspector of Hospitals in the Care Quality Commission on 31 May 2013. and was said by the Health Service Journal to be the third most powerful person in the English NHS in December 2013.
Richards attended the Dragon School in Oxford, and Radley College.
Richards is a cancer specialist. He was an Imperial Cancer Research Fund (ICRF) research fellow in medical oncology at St Bartholomew's Hospital in London (1982–86), and then an oncology consultant at Guy's Hospital in London (1986–95), becoming a Reader in 1991. He was clinical director of Cancer Services at Guy's and St Thomas' Hospital in London (1991–99) and Sainsbury Professor of Palliative Medicine at St Thomas' Hospital from 1995. He was head of the Academic Division of Oncology at King's College London from 1998–99 and chair of the National Cancer Research Institute from 2006–08.