Kate Bingham, the beleaguered chair of the UK vaccine taskforce, is expected to leave her post at the end of the year, according to a government source. Bingham, a venture capitalist married to Treasury minister Jesse Norman, has come under fire for her use of expensive PR consultants and allegations over a presentation to a private investors’ conference. She is set to leave her post when her contract runs out at the end of December, with the source saying it “had always been clear” that was her intention. Labour had asked the cabinet secretary, Simon Case, to investigate claims that Bingham disclosed sensitive information about potential targets for the government’s vaccines push to a $200-a-head private conference. According to a video of the event obtained by the Sunday Times, Bingham showed financiers a detailed list of vaccines which the UK government was closely monitoring and could later invest in. Bingham reportedly told the event: “We haven’t necessarily signed contracts with all of them so far. But they’re all in our sights.” Several of the vaccines are owned or funded by publicly traded companies.
Appearing before a joint select committee hearing last week, Bingham denied any wrongdoing and described the report as “nonsense”, “inaccurate” and “irresponsible”. She insisted her presentation had relied “on publicly available information and said little that expert delegates at the conference could not deduce themselves”. Bingham, who reports directly to the prime minister, has spent more than £600,000 of taxpayers’ money on hiring PR consultants from a firm called Admiral Associates, rather than rely on civil service press officers, according to leaked documents also obtained by the Sunday Times. Speaking on Monday, Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer told LBC Radio the £670,000 bill for spin doctors could not be justified. “You cannot justify that sort of money being spent,” he said. “If only it was the only example. There are lots of examples of lucrative contracts going without any due process and I think the public mood on this is very, very clear.” A Downing Street spokesman said the decision to hire the PR advisers was signed off by officials at the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS). “Specialist communications support was contracted by the vaccine taskforce for a time-limited period in line with existing public sector recruitment practices and frameworks,” the spokesman said. Asked whether the prime minister had full confidence in her, the spokesman said: “Yes. The work of the vaccine taskforce is obviously of great importance and we have secured agreements for 350m doses overall of six leading vaccine candidates.” The government has repeatedly been accused of cronyism in its management of the Covid-19 pandemic. Dido Harding, who was selected to run the £12bn NHS test-and-trace programme without an open appointments process, is married to Conservative MP John Penrose. Harding is not taking a salary for her role, and an advertisement for her permanent replacement is expected to be placed shortly. A BEIS spokesperson previously said: “As we have already made clear, Kate Bingham’s role as chair of the vaccine taskforce includes appearing at conferences, speaking to media and liaising closely with wider stakeholders.” • This article was amended on 25 October 2021. An earlier version said that Kate Bingham was expected to leave the task force when her contract ran out, but referred to this both as “at the end of the year” and “in January”; the former timing was meant in both instances and this has been clarified.