A confectionary and soft drinks executive and the man in charge of programming the nation’s pensions have been appointed to take charge of the largest civilian IT project in the world, the Government announced today.

The Department of Health named Christine Connelly, formerly of Cadbury-Schweppes, and Martin Bellamy, of the Department of Work and Pensions, to jointly head the mammoth £12.4bn overhaul of National Health Service computer systems, a job formerly ranked as the highest-paid job in Whitehall.

As The Times reported in April, the previous head of the project, Richard Granger, earned £270,000 to £285,000 a year — roughly 50 per cent more than the Prime Minister.

Mr Granger, a former management consultant, resigned as Director-General, NHS IT, last year after five years. But the Government has now split his job into two — each advertised for circa £200,000 — costing the taxpayer potentially 40 per cent more in managerial wage bills for the project.

Ms Connelly will be the first Chief Information Officer (CIO) for Health and will focus on developing and delivering the Department’s “overall information strategy and integrating leadership across the NHS and associated bodies”, officials said.

Mr Bellamy will become Director of Programme and System Delivery, head of the agency called NHS Connecting for Health which is responsible for the so-called National Project for IT (NPfIT) to create 50 million electronic patient records among other overhauls of NHS systems.

Combined, the two new jobs are equivalent to Mr Granger’s former position, on increased wages — which critics labelled an “abuse of taxpayers’ money”.

At Cadbury-Schweppes Ms Connelly was formerly in charge of a £250m annual budget, 1,300 IT employees and 24,000 desktop computers globally.

However, this will pale in comparison to the challenge of the NPfIT, designed to link 300 hospitals with thousands of GP surgeries, but which is now running up to two years late in parts and has been repeatedly criticised by auditors, doctors and patients.

Two of the original four companies contracted to supply regions of the NHS in England with computer software have pulled out of the project since it began in 2002.

Meanwhile, only a handful of the 152 primary care trusts in England have so far managed to upload their patient records to the national online database, with “clunky” results, according to a recent study by Imperial College.

Despite this, Ms Connelly was upbeat today, saying: “I am delighted to be joining such a strong team [at the Department of Health] and am looking forward to getting started in September."

Mr Bellamy has worked for the Department for Work and Pensions since 2003, mainly as CIO of the Pension Service. He was formerly employed by KPMG and Reuters.

He insisted that “much has already been achieved by this strategically important [NPfIT]“. But he added, “what excites me most about my new role is the potential to deliver substantial further benefits both to patients and to staff in the NHS”.

The Department of Health refused to specify exactly how much the new incumbents would be earning.

Public Sector Rich List

£138,724* Cabinet minister* (includes parliamentary salary of £61,820)

£189,994* Gordon Brown, Prime Minister

£132,317* David Cameron, Leader of the Opposition

£285,000 Richard Granger, former director-general of NHS IT

£400,000 The estimated combined salaries of new chief information officer and director of IT programme and system delivery at Department of Health; “exact package to be negotiated and agreed with the successful candidates”. Managerial wage bills for the project could go up by 40 per cent

Sources: Parliament; Department of Health; TaxPayers Alliance

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