Dido defends 900 advisers getting paid £1,000 a day

THE head of NHS Test and Trace has defended paying consultants an average salary of £1,000 per day.

Baroness Dido Harding told MPs it was ‘appropriate’ to bring in external help in the ‘extreme emergency circumstances’ of the coronavirus crisis.

The Tory peer said an army of up to 900 consultants had done ‘very important work alongside public servants, the military and healthcare professionals’.

And she told the Commons public accounts committee: ‘We couldn’t have built the service without all of that combined expertise.’

The much-criticised system, launched last spring and handed a £22billion budget, tested close to 1,000 people per minute on Sunday. And more than 7.5million have been contact-traced since the turn of the year, Lady Harding said.

Asked about suggestions from the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies that the programme was having a ‘marginal’ impact on transmission, the ex-TalkTalk boss (pictured) replied: ‘There is no doubt that as we have built and scaled the service, we have learnt more and more and we are now hitting all of the targets Sage set us.’

More than 80 per cent of people who tested positive for coronavirus last week – and over 90 per cent of their contacts – were reached by Test and Trace. And Lady Harding told MPs: ‘So, no, I don’t believe we are having a marginal impact. As measured, we are having a material impact in the fight against Covid.’

David Williams, the second permanent secretary at the Department of Health and Social Care, denied that private firms were profiteering from the public health crisis. He added ‘plans are in place to reduce’ the number of consultants on the state payroll over the next few months.