The Baroness Harding of Winscombe | |
|---|---|
 Harding in 2023 | |
| Chief Executive of theUK Health Security Agency | |
| Interim 18 August 2020 – 7 May 2021 | |
| Prime Minister | Boris Johnson |
| Preceded by | Duncan Selbie (CEO ofPublic Health England)[1] |
| Succeeded by | Jenny Harries |
| Head ofNHS Test and Trace | |
| In office 7 May 2020 – 7 May 2021 | |
| Prime Minister | Boris Johnson |
| Preceded by | Office established |
| Succeeded by | Jenny Harries |
| Chair ofNHS Improvement | |
| In office 9 October 2017 – October 2021 | |
| Prime Minister | Theresa May Boris Johnson |
| Deputy | Richard Douglas Andrew Valentine Morris |
| Preceded by | Ed Smith |
| Succeeded by | Andrew Valentine Morris |
| Member of the House of Lords | |
| Life peerage 15 September 2014 | |
| Personal details | |
| Born | Diana Mary Harding November 1967 (age 57–58) |
| Nationality | British |
| Political party | Conservative |
| Spouse | |
| Children | 2 |
| Parent | |
| Relatives | John Harding, 1st Baron Harding of Petherton (grandfather) |
| Alma mater | Magdalen College, Oxford Harvard Business School (MBA) |
Diana Mary "Dido"Harding, Baroness Harding of Winscombe (born November 1967)[2] is a British businesswoman andlife peer who served as chair ofNHS Improvement from 2017 to 2021, and as interim chief executive of theUK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) and head ofNHS Test and Trace from 2020 to 2021.
She was the chief executive of theTalkTalk Group from 2010 to 2017. A member of theConservative Party, Harding is married toJohn Penrose, a Conservative formermember of Parliament, and is a friend of former Prime MinisterDavid Cameron. Harding was appointed as a member of theHouse of Lords by Cameron in 2014. She holds a board position at theJockey Club, which is responsible for several major horse-racing events including theCheltenham Festival.
In May 2020, Harding was appointed by Health SecretaryMatt Hancock to headNHS Test and Trace, established to track and help prevent the spread ofCOVID-19 in England. In August 2020, after it was announced thatPublic Health England was to be abolished, Harding was also appointed interim chief executive of the new National Institute for Health Protection, later renamed theUK Health Security Agency; she left that role soon after the new agency was established in April 2021.
Harding is the daughter ofJohn Harding, 2nd Baron Harding of Petherton, and the granddaughter ofField MarshalJohn Harding, 1st Baron Harding of Petherton, who commanded theDesert Rats for a few months inWorld War II.[3]
Raised on the family pig farm inDorset, she was educated from 1978 to 1985 atSt Antony's Leweston, then an all-girlprivateCatholic school. She then graduated inPhilosophy, Politics and Economics, fromMagdalen College, Oxford,[4] where she studied underVernon Bogdanor and alongsideDavid Cameron,[5] and then studied atHarvard Business School, gaining anMBA.[6]
Upon graduating in 1988 she joined the management consultancyMcKinsey & Company.[7][8] In 1995 she was appointed marketing director ofThomas Cook before moving toManpower andKingfisher in 1998 andWoolworths in 1999.[8][9] From 2000 to 2004 she was "commercial director for value added foods" and then "international support director" atTesco.[9] In 2007 she moved toSainsbury's as convenience store director, and took a seat on the operating board in 2008.[10]
Harding was named the first CEO ofTalkTalk in 2010, whenCarphone Warehouse split its telecoms business from its retail operation.[11][12] She was appointed as a non-executive director on The Court of The Bank of England in July 2014.[10] She has also served on the boards ofBritish Land andCheltenham Racecourse.[10]
In October 2015, TalkTalk experienced acyber-attack, during which personal and banking details of up to four million customers, not all of which were encrypted, were thought to have been accessed.[13]City A.M. described her responses as "naive", noting that early on, when asked if the affected customer data was encrypted or not, she replied: "The awful truth is that I don't know". Her inflexible line on termination fees was also criticised.[14]Marketing ran a headline, "TalkTalk boss Dido Harding's utter ignorance is a lesson to us all".[15] TheEvening Standard noted that "It has been a tough week for TalkTalk boss Dido Harding, facing complaints from customers and calls for her head".[16] The company admitted the incident had cost it £60 million and lost it 95,000 customers.[17] Fining the company £400,000, theInformation CommissionerElizabeth Denham blamed a "failure to implement the most basic cyber security measures."[18]
In February 2017, Harding announced that she would stand down as CEO of TalkTalk in order to focus more on her public service activities.[19] In January 2018 she joined the main board of theJockey Club, which runs many of British horse racing's most popular events, including theGrand National, theCheltenham Festival andthe Derby.[20]
Harding joined theHouse of Lords as aConservativelife peer on 20 October 2014.[21] She has sat on theEconomic Affairs Committee since 27 June 2017.[22] She has not rebelled against her party on any of the votes she has attended during her time in the House.[23]
In October 2017, Harding was appointed chair ofNHS Improvement, which is responsible for overseeing all NHS hospitals, comprising foundation trusts and NHS trusts, as well as independent providers of NHS-funded care.[24][25] Parliament'sHealth Select Committee, at that time chaired by then Conservative MPSarah Wollaston, recommended that Harding resign as a Conservative peer and sit as acrossbench peer in order to "allow for greater parliamentary and public confidence in her ability to challenge government ministers and policies if this role demands it". Harding did not accept this.[26] Her role ceased in July 2022, when NHS Improvement was merged intoNHS England.[27]
In May 2020, Health SecretaryMatt Hancock announced that Harding was to be put in charge of the "track, test and trace" programme (later given the nameNHS Test and Trace) as part of the UK government's response to theCOVID-19 pandemic.[28] In November 2020, a case was lodged jointly by the not-for-profitGood Law Project and theRunnymede Trust, a race equalitythink tank, to challenge the legality of this appointment.[29] In February 2022, twoHigh Court judges ruled that Hancock had failed to comply with theEquality Act 2010 when appointing Harding, and also when appointingMike Coupe as director of testing in September 2020.[30][31] The court was told that Harding intervened to add Coupe, a former colleague of hers at Sainsbury's, to the shortlist of candidates.[32]
On 18 June 2020 it was announced by Hancock that the UK government intended to switch itscontact-recording mobile phone app from a centralised model to the decentralised approach pioneered byApple andGoogle, due to privacy concerns, among other things. Harding was to decide on the suitability of the alternative model. She stated that "what we've done in really rigorously testing both our own COVID-19 app and theGoogle-Apple version is demonstrate that none of them are working sufficiently well to be actually reliable to determine whether any of us should self-isolate for two weeks [and] that's true across the world". The change was, however, widely interpreted in the press as an abandonment of the UK's app in favour of the Apple-Google one, and a U-turn by the government.[33][34] TheBBC also reported that the "latest developments come a day after the BBC revealed that a former Apple executive, Simon Thompson, was taking charge of the late-running project as part of Baroness Harding's team".[33]
In August 2020 the government announced a merger betweenPublic Health England and NHS Test and Trace to form theNational Institute for Health Protection, with Harding as interim chief executive.[1][35] The appointment was criticised by health experts as she did not have a background in health, and because of her political position.[36][37][38]The Guardian quoted allies of hers who, in response, said that she had quickly learned after being appointed chair ofNHS Improvement in 2017 and that she had a record of "getting things done" while working in business.[36] It has been widely claimed that her appointments to various public bodies came about through nepotism and her alliances with members of the Conservative party and key figures in the political establishment.[39]Jolyon Maugham QC, director of the Good Law Project, wrote: "For ministers or special advisers to choose their friends or close associates for these key roles is to exclude those who are more able, or better value. And ultimately it is the public interest that suffers."[40] In 2022 theRunnymede Trust won aHigh Court action thatMatt Hancock had failed to comply with public sector equality duty when appointing Harding to head theNational Institute for Health Protection.[31]
As the second spike of the pandemic developed into the winter of 2020 and over Christmas, commentary developed in much of the press about Harding's absence from the national stage as hospitalisations and deaths grew alarmingly. The columnistRod Liddle in the right-leaningThe Sunday Times complained: "Test and Trace has cost the taxpayer £22bn. It has repeatedly failed to achieve targets it has been set. It was once heralded as The Thing That Would Defeat Covid, but nobody talks about it much any more."[41]
In January 2021, Harding defended spending upwards of £1,000-a-day each on consultants for the contact tracing programme. Appearing before thePublic Accounts Committee, Harding told MPs she felt it was "appropriate" to bring in external help in "extreme emergency circumstances".[42]
The merged agency was established on 1 April 2021, by which time it was called theUK Health Security Agency, and Harding handed over the leadership role to Jenny Harries.[43]
From June to August 2021, Harding took a temporary leave of absence from her role as chair ofNHS Improvement to apply for the position ofChief Executive of NHS England, with SirAndrew Valentine Morris acting in the interim.[44] Harding was eliminated at an early stage with the job eventually going toAmanda Pritchard.[45] Morris was subsequently appointed chair on a permanent basis following Harding's resignation from the position in October 2021.[46]
In February 2013, she was included in that year's list of the hundred most powerful women in the UK byWoman's Hour onBBC Radio 4.[47] The following year, she was named in the ten most influential women in the BBCWoman's Hour Power List 2014.[48]
Harding was created alife peer on 15 September 2014, taking the titleBaroness Harding ofWinscombe in the county ofSomerset.[49][50]
Harding is an Honorary Doctor of Business Administration atAnglia Ruskin University.[51]
In October 1995, she marriedJohn Penrose, who was MP forWeston-super-Mare from 2005 to 2024 and held junior minister posts from 2010 to 2019.[52] The couple met while working atMcKinsey, have two daughters, and live in London during the week and Somerset at the weekend.[53][54] Penrose sits on the advisory board of a think tank called 1828, which calls for the NHS to be replaced by an insurance system and for Public Health England to be scrapped.[55]
Harding is ahorse racing enthusiast and member of theJockey Club, joining the main board in January 2018.[20] In 1993 she borrowed £7,000 from her bank to buy an Irishthoroughbred to ride in ladies'point-to-point races. In 1998, her horseCool Dawn won theCheltenham Gold Cup.[56][57] Harding rode Cool Dawn herself for three seasons, achieving second place in the 1996Foxhunter Chase atCheltenham.[58] She said that the horse: "... taught me that dreams come true, sometimes, that actually miracles can happen. Isn't that a great gift? I think it shaped my business career ...".[59]
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