Dido Harding – the former head of the much-criticised Test and Trace programme – has applied to become the head of NHS England.
Baroness Harding, a Tory peer, has stepped away from her role running the health service’s hospital trusts to pursue the top job.
If successful in replacing Sir Simon Stevens when he stands down as chief executive July, the former Talk-Talk chief would become the first woman to hold the role.
But her decision to apply is hugely controversial because of her time in charge of Test and Trace, which ended earlier this year.
In March, the former head of the Treasury branded the £37billion contact tracing programme the ‘most wasteful and inept public spending programme of all time’.
Last year Boris Johnson faced calls to sack Lady Harding and replace her over the continued poor performance of what was meant to be a ‘world-beating’ system.
According to a biography on the NHS England website, Lady Harding, 53, whose husband is a Tory MP, has stepped down as chair of NHS Improvement during the recruitment process.
She has held that position since October 2017 and her career includes top roles at Talk-Talk, Thomas Cook, Woolworths and Tesco.
As well as Lady Harding, NHS England’s chief operating officer Amanda Pritchard is also one of the favourites to succeed Sir Simon.
Baroness Dido Harding is said to be considering putting herself forward to run the health service in England
She studied Policy, Politics and Economics at Oxford University, alongside David Cameron, and is married to John Penrose, Conservative MP for Weston-super-Mare
The updated biography on the NHS England website states: ‘Dido has applied to become the next CEO of the NHS and has therefore stood aside as Chair of NHS Improvement whilst the recruitment process takes place. Sir Andrew Morris is standing in for her during this time.’
NHS England announced in April that current NHS chief executive Sir Simon was to stand down ‘as planned’ at the end of July to become a crossbench peer in the House of Lords.
In a letter to colleagues, he described being in charge of the NHS through ‘some of the toughest challenges in its history’ as a privilege.
Sir Simon — who has been in charge for seven years — has served through three elections and the Covid pandemic.
WHO ELSE IS IN THE RUNNING FOR THE JOB?
Amanda Pritchard
NHS England chief operating officer
The current holder of the NHS’s number two job is many people’s favourite to succeed Sir Simon Stevens as chief executive of NHS England.
The daughter of a bishop, Ms Pritchard grew up in Durham and went to Oxford University before spending her entire 25-year career in the NHS.
Emily Lawson
Former NHS England chief commercial officer
Emily Lawson is the incoming head of the No10 delivery unit after leaving her post as NHS England chief commercial officer.
She has been discussed as an interim leader for NHS England between Sir Simon’s departure in July and her start at the delivery unit.
Trade magazine HSJ has credited her as one of the outside bets.
According to the NHS England annual report for 2019/20, the chief executive’s salary was between £195,000 and £200,000.
The report stated that Sir Simon had, during that year, voluntarily taken a £20,000 annual pay cut for the sixth year in a row.
Boris Johnson said the outgoing health chief had ‘led the NHS with great distinction for the past seven years’.
But Downing Street refused to endorse Lady Harding after she confirmed earlier this month that she was interested in running the NHS.
She was heavily criticised during her stint in charge of the country’s contact tracing programme.
A report earlier this year said T&T had ‘minimal impact on transmission’ despite receiving £37billion of funding.
The Commons Public Accounts Committee said in March there was no evidence the tracing scheme had made a dent in Covid transmission, despite its ‘unimaginable’ budget.
Last year No10 spent £22bn on Test and Trace and the Chancellor promised to throw another £15bn at it in 2021, bringing the total cost to £37bn.
The PAC report said the Government was treating British taxpayers ‘like an ATM machine’.
Sir Nicholas Macpherson, a member of the House of Lords and former permanent secretary at the Treasury, also waded into the row. He posted a cutting tweet that added: ‘The extraordinary thing is that nobody in the government seems surprised or shocked. No matter: the BoE will just print more money.’
Lady Harding’s leadership of Test and Trace last year prompted senior backbencher Sir Bernard Jenkin, chairman of the Liaison Committee, to join Labour in suggesting she be replaced.
At one point in October last year, ahead of the second lockdown which came in in November, the system hit a record low with just 59.6 per cent of the contacts of people who tested positive for the disease being successfully contacted and told to self-isolate.
Sir Bernard, who chairs the Liaison Committee of senior MPs which questions the Prime Minister twice a year, said the peer should be given a ‘well-earned break’ so she and others could ‘reflect on the lessons learned so far’.
Last September she was ridiculed when she claimed nobody was ‘expecting’ to see the ‘really sizeable increase in demand’ for Covid checks ahead of the start of the school year.
Lady Harding’s comments, which come despite the return of schools and more people heading back to work, sparked outrage as she told MPs ‘none of the modelling’ had suggested there would be such a steep uptick in requests.
She blamed the Government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) for seemingly getting its predictions wrong as she said testing capacity had been built based on the panel’s recommendations.
Sir Simon Stevens announced he will step down as chief executive of NHS England in July
There were also numerous reports of staff at deserted walk-in testing centres turning people away if they didn’t have an appointment or weren’t showing obvious coronavirus symptoms.
Baroness Harding was appointed CEO of TalkTalk in 2010, serving in the role for seven years, during which the company was the victim of a cyber attack that saw the personal and banking details of 157,000 customers accessed by hackers.
She was subjected to repeated blackmail attempts after the hack, with demands for Bitcoins in exchange for stolen data, which included customers’ names, email addresses, mobile numbers, home addresses and dates of birth.
In the aftermath, TalkTalk was fined a record £400,000 for security failings which allowed the data to be accessed ‘with ease’ in one of the biggest data breaches in history.
TalkTalk is thought to have lost £60million from the fallout with an estimated 100,000 angry customers leaving, mainly to BT, while 2015 profits halved to £14million and shares lost nearly two-thirds of their value.
Baroness Harding faced repeated calls to step down over the breach, but stayed on until 2017, when she resigned to focus on her ‘public service activities’.
Later that year, she was appointed chair of NHS Improvement, responsible for overseeing all NHS hospitals.