Baroness Dido Harding, who was in charge of the government’s Covid-19 test and trace programme in England, is set to step down from her NHS role at the end of October.
The Conservative peer recently applied to be the new boss of NHS England, but was rejected in favour of Amanda Pritchard.
The current testing and contact tracing scheme has been heavily criticized during the pandemic.
But the government has always defended their system, saying it helped curb any spread of the virus.
Baroness Harding has served as chair of NHS Improvement which involves the overseeing of NHS hospitals, foundation trust and NHS trusts, since October 2017.
She also ran the coronavirus contact-tracing service between May 2020 and April 2021.
At that time, despite Prime Minister Boris Johnson promising a “world-beating” test and trace system, a BBC investigation found that it was failing in some areas and beset with IT problems.
The Commons Public Accounts Committee stated in a report in March there was “no clear evidence” the £22 billion venture contributed to a reduction in coronavirus infection levels.
The National Audit Office also reported back in June, there were still significant weaknesses in the performance of Test and Trace, particularly around slow turnaround times for test results.
Baroness Harding has worked at some of the most successful companies in Britain. She was chief executive for TalkTalk Telecom Group, and before that she had held senior roles with Sainsbury’s and Tesco.
