1. Diana Mary "Dido" Harding, Baroness Harding of Winscombe was born on November 1967 and is a British businesswoman and life peer who served as chair of NHS Improvement from 2017 to 2021, and as interim chief executive of the UK Health Security Agency and head of NHS Test and Trace from 2020 to 2021.
Dido Harding was the chief executive of the TalkTalk Group from 2010 to 2017.
Dido Harding was appointed as a member of the House of Lords by Cameron in 2014.
Dido Harding holds a board position at the Jockey Club, which is responsible for several major horse-racing events including the Cheltenham Festival.
In May 2020, Dido Harding was appointed by Health Secretary Matt Hancock to head NHS Test and Trace, established to track and help prevent the spread of COVID-19 in England.
Dido Harding then graduated in Philosophy, Politics and Economics, from Magdalen College, Oxford, where she studied under Vernon Bogdanor and alongside David Cameron, and then studied at Harvard Business School, gaining an MBA.
Dido Harding was named the first CEO of TalkTalk in 2010, when Carphone Warehouse split its telecoms business from its retail operation.
Dido Harding was appointed as a non-executive director on The Court of The Bank of England in July 2014.
Dido Harding has served on the boards of British Land and Cheltenham Racecourse.
Marketing ran a headline, "TalkTalk boss Dido Harding's utter ignorance is a lesson to us all".
The Evening Standard noted that "It has been a tough week for TalkTalk boss Dido Harding, facing complaints from customers and calls for her head".
In February 2017, Dido Harding announced that she would stand down as CEO of TalkTalk in order to focus more on her public service activities.
Dido Harding joined the House of Lords as a Conservative life peer on 20 October 2014.
Dido Harding has sat on the Economic Affairs Committee since 27 June 2017.
Dido Harding has not rebelled against her party on any of the votes she has attended during her time in the House.
In October 2017, Dido Harding was appointed chair of NHS Improvement, which is responsible for overseeing all NHS hospitals, comprising foundation trusts and NHS trusts, as well as independent providers of NHS-funded care.
Parliament's Health Select Committee, at that time chaired by then Conservative MP Sarah Wollaston, recommended that Dido Harding resign as a Conservative peer and sit as a crossbench 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".
Dido Harding's role ceased in July 2022, when NHS Improvement was merged into NHS England.
In May 2020, Health Secretary Matt Hancock announced that Dido Harding was to be put in charge of the "track, test and trace" programme as part of the UK government's response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The court was told that Dido Harding intervened to add Coupe, a former colleague of hers at Sainsbury's, to the shortlist of candidates.
Dido Harding was to decide on the suitability of the alternative model.
Dido Harding stated that "what we've done in really rigorously testing both our own COVID-19 app and the Google-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 merged agency was established on 1 April 2021, by which time it was called the UK Health Security Agency, and Dido Harding handed over the leadership role to Jenny Harries.
From June to August 2021, Dido Harding took a temporary leave of absence from her role as chair of NHS Improvement to apply for the position of Chief Executive of NHS England, with Sir Andrew Valentine Morris acting in the interim.
Dido Harding was eliminated at an early stage with the job eventually going to Amanda Pritchard.
Dido Harding was created a life peer on 15 September 2014, taking the title Baroness Dido Harding of Winscombe in the county of Somerset.
Dido Harding is an Honorary Doctor of Business Administration at Anglia Ruskin University.
Dido Harding is a horse racing enthusiast and member of the Jockey Club, joining the main board in January 2018.
Dido Harding rode Cool Dawn herself for three seasons, achieving second place in the 1996 Foxhunter Chase at Cheltenham.