THERE are new questions for the head of the UK government’s vaccine taskforce after it was revealed she spent £670,000 of taxpayers’ money on her own team of PR consultants.
Kate Bingham was appointed in May and since June has used eight-full time private press officers to oversee her media strategy, according to the Sunday Times.
Documents leaked to the newspaper show she has already spent £500,000 on the team from London PR agency Admiral Associates, which is contracted until the end of the year.
The consultants are reported to have helped Bingham prepare for media appearances, draft statements and oversee a podcast called Covid-19: The Search for a Vaccine.
Bingham is said to have “insisted” on hiring the spin doctors despite concerns they would duplicate the work of about 100 communications staff at the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS), in which her taskforce sits.
It's the latest accusation of impropriety made against Bingham. Last week she was accused of showing off a list of vaccines the UK government is closely monitoring at a “premier webinar networking event” for women in private equity.
The vaccine tsar rejected the allegations and told a joint select committee last week that the report was “nonsense”, “inaccurate” and “irresponsible”.
Though, in February, Bingham is due to appear at another elite function: a conference hosted by Biocom, a Californian biotech firm, charging $2460 (£1870) a ticket to bring together “executives, bankers [and] venture capitalists”. It promises networking that will “be fruitful for your business ventures this year and for many years to come”.
In brochures, Bingham is advertised solely as head of the UK vaccine taskforce and the literature says she will discuss her work “to find and manufacture a Covid-19 vaccine”.
It is unclear what process Boris Johnson used to appoint venture capitalist Bingham - who is married to Tory minister Jesse Norman, and who went to school with Johnson’s sister, Rachel, and who studied at Oxford at the same time as the prime minister.
She has chosen not to step down from her role as managing director of SV Health Investors, a private equity firm operating in Boston, Massachusetts, and London- but is, instead, supposed to have “stepped away” from the role..
Asked about the PRs one Whitehall source told The Times: “I don’t know what they do.” Another said: “They’re bossing around civil servants but no one knows who they are, what their experience is or what authority they have.”
A third Whitehall source said the team of consultants helped Bingham with day-to-day “comms works”, such as appearing in interviews and preparing press statements, and had set up a podcast co-presented by Bingham called Covid-19: The Search for a Vaccine.
Rachel Reeves, the shadow Cabinet Office minister, said: “At a time of national crisis, people don’t want to see huge sums of taxpayers’ money needlessly sprayed on spin doctors or management consultants.
“There needs to be a breakdown of this expenditure and proper justification as to how it actually helps the national effort in tackling this pandemic.”
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