Baroness Dido Harding who led the government's heavily criticised test-and-trace programme will leave her NHS role in October, it has been confirmed.
The Tory peer, had been chair of NHS Improvement since October 2017 and quit as chief of the Test and Trace programme in April this year.
In June Baroness Harding who is married to Tory MP John Penrose, applied to become the new NHS England boss but missed out on the job offer.
It went to Amanda Pritchard, who became the first female boss of the health service after working as its Chief Operating Officer for the last two years.
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The test-and-trace scheme cost an eye-watering £37 billion.
It was blasted by the Commons Public Accounts Committee (PAC) in March who said in a report, there was “no clear evidence” the venture reduced coronavirus infection levels.
Speaking to BBC's Women's Hour, she added: "I think all of us had a lot of hope invested in test and trace a year ago.
"And what we’ve learned – and the world has learned this – is testing and tracing and isolating is a part of the response. It’s not the silver bullet, it’s not the only thing that means life can get back to normal.”
Baroness Harding refused to apologise for the test-and-trace scheme's failure, insisting any apology was “in the sense that I’m apologising for the science – the disease is such that it looks to be impossible to be able to contain it only with testing and tracing.”
Among her previous jobs, Baroness Harding was chief executive of TalkTalk for seven years until 2017, and before that worked in senior roles for both Sainsbury’s and Tesco.
