Stop shielding NHS Test and Trace tsar Dido Harding – Tom Richmond

I refer to Tory peer Dido Harding who somehow found herself in charge of testing policy in spite of presiding over a massive data breach when running communications firm TalkTalk.

Now acting chair of the National Institute for Health Protection – a role for which she has no clear qualifications – she’s so mistrusted that she’s only made occasional appearances at 10 Downing Street press conferences on Covid.

And she commanded no confidence when questioned earlier this year by a Parliamentary committee. She did, in fairness, make it to the CBI virtual conference this week.

Yet, having been a made a life peer by David Cameron – remember him? – in 2014, there is nothing to prevent Baroness Harding of Winscombe appearing before the House of Lords, weekly if necessary, to take questions from peers.

Not only would it highlight the relevance of the Lords, but the inquisition (which would be gentler – and kinder – than in the House of Commons by merciless MPs) would enable key points about testing policy and wide-ranging failures.

The NHS Test and Trace system this week reached the lowest ever proportion of contacts of people who tested positive for Covid-19 – despite a surge in cases and the enforcement of a new lockdown.

Yet Harding’s role and remit is, in many respects, comparable to a Cabinet Minster and there was never any question of peers like Peter Carrington, as Foreign Secretary before the Falklands crisis, or Andrew Adonis, who held the transport brief in Gordon Brown’s government, shirking such scrutiny.

But, given Harding was appointed to the Lords presumably because of her expertise, you have to wonder if she takes this instiution remotely seriously.

In the past five years, she’s voted 169 times – and spoken on just 20 occasions. The most recent was a Lords debate on the original Coronavirus Bill back in March when she endorsed measures to curtail civil liberties in the first lockdown and played down the need for scrutiny because these wre not “normal times”.

Sorry, Dido Harding – but this defence is no longer applicable as the charge sheet against you mounts by the day. Eight months have now passed. Face up to your democratic duties – or quit. And, if you choose to do the decent thing, please also renounce your pointless peerage.

BRITAIN would certainly be no worse off if the methodical Theresa May – rather than the impetuous Boris Johnson – overseeing Covid-19.

She demonstrated this week in the Commons when she tore into the Government, while her flummoxed successor skedaddled, over its interpretation of the data that led to a new lockdown being imposed.

May lost her authority, however, when Brexit dissidents in her party teamed up with the Opposition to effectively take control of Commons proceedings.

Yet could history be repeating itself? Former Cabinet Ministers Dr Liam Fox, David Davis and Mark Harper all raised points of orders this week calling for a dedicated Covid committee to help oversee strategy and, specifically, the impact of lockdowns on the wider economy.

Davis, the former Brexit Secretary and current Haltemprice and Howden MP, served notice that he and, others, intend “to press the matter further” because the Commons cannot do its job properly at present. Ominous words.

A LAME defence from Justice Secretary Robert Buckland over the failure to put in place protocols to enable designated family members to visit relatives in care homes as lockdown separation takes its toll.

He bleated that the Government needs time to come up with “more innovation solutions”. Time – for the record – is not what many families have.

Mike Padgham, chair of North Yorkshire’s Independent Health Group, set out a series of proposals on October 1 in a letter to Matt Hancock, the Health and (supposedly) Social Care Secretary.

“We ask that you permit care and nursing homes to allow a nominated person to be regarded as an essential worker and therefore able to have weekly tests,” he proposed.

“Having had a test and a confirmed negative result, they could then visit. Homes would still insist upon social distancing and PPE, but it would at least be a way for these vulnerable people to have some better contact.”

No reply has been received. Why not?

THIS week’s Covid debate in Parliament heard an impassioned plea from York MP Rachael Maskell on how a testing regime was being developed in her city – and just needed Government ‘seed funding’.

What a pity Nadine Dorries, the Health Minister on the Commons front bench at the time, was too busy shuffling her own papers, and not even having the courtesy to listen to constructive suggestions.

The Government does not have all the answers over the pandemc. In fact it has very few.

THE BBC hope to kick into touch calls for Marcus Rashford to be nominated for next month’s Sports Personality of the Year Award by giving the footballer and child poverty campaigner a subsidiary ‘token’ prize.

Not good enough. As well as achieving so much off the pitch in this unique year, he’s more than a match for his rivals Lewis Hamilton – the Formula One 
driver resides out of the country for tax reasons – and boxer Tyson Fury whose views have been known to cause embarrassment.

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