Coronavirus: Dido Harding and her meteoric rise

The selection of Dido Harding to run the UK’s new public well being company cements her place as one of the highly effective unelected officers concerned within the combat in opposition to coronavirus.

As chair of the Nationwide Institute for Well being Safety, she’s going to take management of an enormous scientific, technological and bureaucratic empire which ministers hope will play an important function in finally defeating the virus.

In addition to persevering with to supervise the much-criticised NHS Check and Hint system, which she helped launch in Could, she’s going to assume accountability for all native public well being safety groups following the abolition of Public Well being England, in addition to the Joint Biosecurity Centre.

It caps a meteoric rise by the Whitehall ranks for the high-achieving businesswoman, whose time as chief government of Speak Speak was marred by an enormous knowledge breach which landed the agency a document £400,000 advantageous.

A profitable newbie jockey whose ardour for horses is shared by her boss, Well being Secretary Matt Hancock, she has an impeccable Conservative pedigree.

She is married to an ex-minister, John Penrose, and represents the Tories within the Home of Lords. Her full title is Baroness Harding of Winscombe, a reference to the village in her husband’s Western-Tremendous-Mare constituency the place the couple reside.

Whereas the coronavirus outbreak has thrust the 52-year-old into the nationwide highlight – she has appeared a number of occasions at televised No. 10 briefings – she was already an influential backroom determine inside the NHS.

For the previous three years, she has been chair of NHS Enchancment, a physique first created within the New Labour years however which was reconstituted by the coalition authorities to deal with driving up requirements throughout the well being service throughout a interval of monetary austerity.

As somebody who had spent the vast majority of her enterprise profession within the retail business, beginning out at Kingfisher and Thomas Prepare dinner earlier than transferring to Sainsbury’s and Tesco, she was seen as being properly positioned to assist drive long-term transformation and integration whereas sustaining affected person service and security ranges.

Cyber assault

The appointment was not uncontroversial, given her lack of expertise in well being issues and coming because it did simply six months after she stepped down as boss of Speak Speak within the wake of one of the high-profile and damaging knowledge breaches in UK telecoms historical past.

A sustained cyber assault in October 2015 led to 4 million prospects having their private info put in danger. Some 157,000 had their particulars stolen, together with 15,000 whose financial institution particulars have been compromised.

Her dealing with of the disaster was strongly criticised, significantly her admission that she didn’t know whether or not the data was encrypted or not, an oversight she described as an “terrible fact”.

The agency was fined £400,000 by the Data Commissioner for poor web site safety however the board caught by her, regardless of the episode costing the corporate £60m and 95,000 prospects.

It was a giant blot on a hitherto unblemished blue-chip enterprise profession, which had begun 20 years earlier when she joined administration consultants McKinsey & Co after graduating with an MBA from Harvard College.

Baroness Harding’s grandfather, Subject Marshal John Harding, commanded the well-known Military division the Desert Rats throughout World Struggle Two. Her father was additionally an Military officer, in addition to a hereditary peer.

Born and privately educated in Dorset, she studied politics, philosophy and economics at Oxford similtaneously David Cameron. Each have been taught by the distinguished constitutional historian Professor Vernon Bogdanor.

It was the previous prime minister who nominated her for a peerage in 2014. And it was underneath Mr Cameron that her husband made it into authorities, serving as a tradition minister and authorities whip.

Dido Harding blazed a path for ladies within the typically unforgiving world of the Metropolis. She is considered one of an unique membership of ladies to have run a FTSE-100 agency, whereas she can be a non-executive director of the Financial institution of England.

However since coming into public service, some counsel she has benefited from an online {of professional}, instructional, social and marital connections which have reignited claims of cronyism on the prime of the Conservative Get together.

Cheltenham winner

She is an achieved horsewoman, proprietor and patron of the horseracing business, considered one of whose greatest supporters occurs to be the well being secretary.

Throughout her profession within the saddle, she was runner-up in a prestigious race for amateurs on the Cheltenham Pageant, whereas her horse Cool Daybreak received the Blue Riband occasion of the Nationwide Hunt season, the Gold Cup, in 1998.

Whereas Mr Hancock’s exploits on the racecourse are much less illustrious – he received a charity race in 2012 – he represents the constituency of Newmarket, the place the UK’s costliest bloodstock is stabled.

He’s the business’s unofficial champion within the Cupboard, though some have raised eyebrows at donations he has obtained from distinguished figures and corporations within the sport, together with equine auctioneers Tattersalls.

Questions have additionally raised concerning the authorities’s determination to award Covid-19 testing contracts to Randox Laboratories, a part of the Randox Well being enterprise which sponsors the Grand Nationwide at Aintree.

Each the racecourse and the agency have hyperlinks with the Conservative Get together.

Dido Harding sits on the board of the Jockey Membership, which owns Aintree, and the MP and former Conservative cupboard minister Owen Paterson’s late spouse Rose was chair of the racecourse.

And Mr Paterson himself has been an adviser to Randox Laboratories since 2015.

Mr Hancock has been lavish in his reward of Baroness Harding throughout their appearances collectively at Downing Avenue, rejecting criticism of the delayed take a look at and hint app and even describing it because the “cherry on Dido’s cake”.

Each can count on intense scrutiny within the coming months as Mr Hancock’s “relentless mission” to guard folks from the virus and the belief he has positioned in Baroness Harding is put to the take a look at.