Matt Hancock denies Government’s vaccines tsar was told to quit

Matt Hancock today denied the head of the Government’s Vaccine Taskforce was told to step down after a backlash over her decision to bill the taxpayer £670,000 for a team of boutique PR consultants.

Kate Bingham has faced a storm of criticism because of the spending on public relations support while she has also been forced to deny claims she shared commercially sensitive information with investors. 

Yesterday it emerged she is due to leave her role at the end of the year and Mr Hancock said this morning that she had not been told to quit. 

The Health Secretary said Ms Bingham had been ‘incredibly important’ in leading the Government’s efforts to purchase potential coronavirus vaccines. 

He said that ‘was always a six month project’ and Ms Bingham ‘was always clear that she couldn’t do it for longer than that’.

Whitehall insiders suggested yesterday that Ms Bingham’s contract ran until the end of the year and she had always intended to leave at that point. 

Downing Street insisted Boris Johnson had full confidence in his vaccines tsar, a bio-chemist and venture capitalist married to the Conservative minister Jesse Norman, and praised her work in securing access to potential coronavirus vaccines.

But Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer told LBC Radio the £670,000 bill for spin doctors ‘can’t be justified’.

Speaking to Times Radio this morning, Mr Hancock was asked if Ms Bingham is standing down at the end of the year. 

He replied: ‘Well, I want to pay tribute to the work that the Vaccine Taskforce has done and Kate Bingham has led that taskforce, delivering the purchasing of 340 million doses of six different vaccines, including of course this one and the Oxford Astra Zeneca vaccine. 

‘That is an incredibly important substantive piece of work. When Kate Bingham came in, she has come in as so many other people have done to support the national effort, bringing in commercial skills which have been incredibly important in buying these absolutely crucial vaccines. 

‘That was always a six month project and I just want to say, put on the record, my thanks to the Vaccine Taskforce for the work they have done, putting the UK in such a string position globally to be at the forefront of the ability to roll these vaccines out.’ 

Mr Hancock said the role of the Vaccine Taskforce was to buy the doses and it will be for the NHS to deploy them.

‘The deployment is my responsibility and is being delivered by the NHS with the support of the armed services and the taskforce’s job, very explicitly, has been to support the science and to do the buying,’ he said.  

Mr Hancock denied that Ms Bingham had been asked to stand down as he insisted her departure had always been planned. 

He said: ‘That is correct. Not only was it always a six month job but she was always clear that she couldn’t do it for longer than that and the Vaccine Taskforce has done a great job to put us into this position where we have a significant proportion of the global supply of the very first vaccine and indeed the Oxford vaccine which is the other frontrunner and I think we should all be very grateful to the work they have done.’  

The Prime Minister’s Official Spokesman said yesterday the decision to hire the PR advisers was signed off by officials at the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy.   

Ms Bingham has vehemently denied revealing potentially sensitive information to investors at a conference, branding reports about it as ‘nonsense’ and ‘inaccurate’.

The Sunday Times reported that at the conference, which was streamed online to anyone for a fee of 200 US dollars (£156), she revealed the names of several companies that the Government had not yet publicly said it was interested in potentially working with.

But Ms Bingham told MPs that she divulged ‘nothing commercially sensitive, nothing confidential’.

A Whitehall source said Ms Bingham had ‘always been clear’ that she would only remain at the head of the Vaccine Taskforce until the end of the year.