Baroness Dido Harding is to step down from her role in the NHS in October this year.
The Tory peer and former CEO of TalkTalk recently applied for the chief executive role at NHS England, seeking to become the first woman in the post. However, Amanda Pritchard, the former head of Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust, was selected instead.
Baroness Harding was the figure responsible for running the government’s Covid-19 test-and-trace programme in England, which has received widespread criticism.
She was selected to lead test-and-trace having served as chair of NHS Improvement since October 2017.
She stepped back from her test-and-trace role in April and will now relinquish her NHS Improvement position in October.
While prime minister Boris Johnson and other figures within government have leapt to the defence of Harding’s test-and-trace programme, a Commons Public Accounts Committee report in March suggested that there was “no clear evidence” of its effectiveness in reducing new Covid-19 cases.
Even as late as June this year, the National Audit Office uncovered significant shortcomings in the scheme’s performance, including low turnaround times for Covid test results.
