Given her background in the no-nonsense world of venture capitalism, few in the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy [Beis] were surprised at Kate Bingham’s ability to make enemies as well as friends.
In May, Boris Johnson appointed her as chair of the UK vaccine taskforce, the crucial body overseeing investment in coronavirus inoculations. Since then, she has infuriated colleagues by appearing to circumvent standard rules of propriety governing public appointees.
This has culminated with nine days of damaging headlines after it was reported in the Sunday Times that she had successfully argued for £670,000 of public relations support and has been forced to deny claims she shared commercially sensitive information with investors.
A Whitehall source said: “She is obviously very talented, she speaks her mind and gets straight to the point, but has frustrated a lot of people at the department.
“She is used to doing things quickly and without bureaucratic bullshit. But she also doesn’t tell people at all times what she is up to. It means that others are having to pick up the pieces behind her.”
It is unclear how Johnson came to appoint Bingham, because there was no formal process, but she is responsible for investing billions in taxpayers’ funds in Covid-19 vaccines that could offer a route out of repeated lockdowns.
Her supporters point out that she has 30 years’ experience in the pharmaceutical industry, knows her brief and was brought in to do a specific job. They say she will rightly be able to claim credit for signing a deal in the summer for 30m doses of the Pfizer and BioNTech vaccine that reports say can prevent more than 90% of people from developing Covid-19.
“If you think about the size of the task she took on, and her success so far, criticisms over PR contracts are a distraction,” said one senior MP.
For some within the department, Bingham appears to have been given free rein without the usual demands surrounding potential conflicts of interest because she was a Johnson appointee, and because her husband is Jesse Norman MP, the financial secretary to the Treasury.
Officials from the PCS union, which represents Beis staff, are planning to ask the department if the new permanent secretary, the former McKinsey consultant Sarah Munby, was involved in signing off the £670,000 PR contract with the Admiral Associates marketing agency.
The consultants have already cost £490,000, with the bill expected to reach £670,000 by the end of the year. The funding came from the Treasury’s allocation for the vaccine programme’s administration budget.
Bingham has brought some of the newly hired PR staff into Beis’ offices, at a time when Johnson’s key aide Dominic Cummings is cutting the number of press officers across Whitehall.
“It is insensitive – her PRs are being paid very well while civil servants are facing upheaval and may be forced to move on,” a source said.
The prime minister’s official spokesman said the decision to hire the PR advisers was signed off by Beis officials.
Bingham, 55, was also criticised following claims that she showed a detailed list of vaccines that the UK government is closely monitoring to a “premier webinar and networking event” for women in private equity hosted by a Massachusetts company. She denied any wrongdoing, telling a joint select committee last week that reports were “inaccurate” and “irresponsible”. Asked if she had disclosed information not in the public domain to the financiers, she told MPs: “No.”
The daughter of the late Lord Tom Bingham, the former lord chief justice once described as the greatest lawyer of his generation, she was educated at the independent St Paul’s girls’ school in west London with the prime minister’s sister, Rachel Johnson. Bingham later read biochemistry at Oxford, before moving on to Harvard business school.
She has worked at private equity firm SV Health Investors for nearly 30 years, where she is the managing partner. Her work has led to the launch of six drugs for the treatment of patients with inflammatory and autoimmune disease and cancer.
According to the government’s website, she temporarily stepped back from SV to work on the government’s vaccine plans.
Prior to joining SV, Bingham worked in business development for Vertex Pharmaceuticals, a US biotechnology company, and at Monitor, a strategy consulting firm.
She married Norman, who went to Eton, in 1992. They have three children.
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