The announcement was made on Thursday in a biography on the NHS England website. The biography stated that Baron Harding has stood down from her role as Chair of NHS Improvement, which she took on in 2017, during the recruitment process.
Baroness Harding stood as the executive chair of the UK government’s coronavirus Test and Trace Programme until April this year. The scheme cost £22 billion and was subjected to much criticism throughout the pandemic. Before her role within the government’s Test and Trace Programme, Baroness Harding stood as CEO for telecommunications company TalkTalk and held senior positions for UK supermarkets Tesco and Sainsbury’s. In 2014, she joined the House of Lords as a Conservative life peer and was amongst the ten most influential women in BBC Woman’s Hour Power List.
