Dido Harding to run agency replacing Public Health England
Firstly, doing a major reorganization like this in the middle of a global pandemic doesn't strike me as a particularly good idea.
Secondly, it is not good that Dido Harding keeps landing plum government jobs. Surely Matt Hancock should be looking to appoint somebody of a scientific background, not a well connected mate with a poor track record.
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/aug/17/dido-harding-to-run-agency-to-replace-public-health-england
Dido Harding, a Conservative peer who heads up Englands widely criticised test-and-trace system, has been chosen to run a new institute to replace Public Health England, after the controversial decision to axe the agency.
Harding will be named as the chair of the National Institute for Health Protection, which will be charged with preventing future outbreaks of infectious diseases, despite the poor performance of NHS test and trace, which she has led since May. Her appointment, which the health secretary, Matt Hancock, is due to confirm on Tuesday in a speech on the future of public health as a result of the pandemic, has sparked a row over yet another Tory politician being handed a senior role in the health system.
The governments decision to scrap PHE was first reported on Sunday and prompted a chorus of criticism that Boris Johnsons administration was trying to shift the blame for its own failings during the pandemic.
Lady Harding, 52, has been a Conservative member of the House of Lords since she was given a life peerage in 2014 by her friend David Cameron, the then prime minister. Harding, an ex-chief executive of the TalkTalk mobile phone company, is already the chair of the regulator NHS Improvement as well as the contact-tracing programme that is under fire for tracking down too few people who have tested positive for the virus.