... run by blundering baroness who gave free rein to Cheltenham
SHE is already in charge of the ‘worldbeating’ test-and-trace scheme that has so far proved anything but.
Now Baroness Dido Harding has been made interim chief of the new National Institute for Health Protection.
The former jockey, who owned 1998 Gold Cup winner Cool Dawn, has defended her role in organising this year’s Cheltenham Festival, which was blamed for spreading the virus.
The appointment of the former TalkTalk boss has led critics to question whether a Tory peer with limited healthcare experience should be handed such a senior role.
The mobile phone giant was fined a record £400,000 after hackers accessed the personal and banking details of 157,000 customers under Baroness Harding’s leadership in 2015.
TalkTalk is thought to have lost £60million from the hack while profits halved.
But she stayed on until 2017. Later that year, she was appointed chair of NHS Improvement, responsible for overseeing all NHS hospitals.
Dr Michael Head, a senior research fellow in global health at Southampton University, told The Guardian her new role ‘makes about as much sense as [chief medical officer] Chris Whitty being appointed the Vodafone head of branding and corporate image’.
Raised on a farm in Somerset, Baroness Harding of Winscombe, 53, is the granddaughter of Field Marshall Lord
Harding, the commander of the Desert Rats who became the most senior soldier in the British Army. Married to John Penrose, the Conservative MP for Weston-super-Mare, she studied Philosophy, Politics and Economics at the University of Oxford alongside friend and former prime minister David Cameron.
Layla Moran, of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Coronavirus, said: ‘The lack of public scrutiny or transparent recruitment process for such a crucial appointment is appalling.’