There was “open warfare” between UK government departments during the pandemic, the former vaccines tsar has said, adding the failure to prioritise the needs of clinically vulnerable, immunocompromised individuals was ethically and morally wrong.
Dame Kate Bingham led the vaccine taskforce (VTF) – based in the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) – between May and December 2020, and played a pivotal role in persuading the government to back the development of a portfolio of potential jabs, as well as securing contracts for millions of doses.
But Bingham has told the Covid inquiry that when initially establishing the remit of the VTF she discovered conflict.
“Therapeutics is obviously my background, so that is the natural area for me to have included in the remit,” she said. “What I did is what I would always do, which is to go and talk to the people involved, including in industry. And it was quite clear there was open warfare between BEIS and the Department of Health.”
While the VTF did not take control of therapeutics, it did include in its remit both therapeutic antibodies – which could be given to people already infected with Covid – and prophylactic antibodies that can be given to people to protect them against infection. The latter included Evusheld, the prophylactic antibody cocktail produced by AstraZeneca.
Bingham said the decision was in line with the VTF’s original mandate to protect the relevant UK population against Covid. “That wasn’t just to protect those people who could respond to a vaccine, but to protect all people, including the immunocompromised,” she said.
However, when asked by Hugo Keith KC, counsel to the inquiry, whether she ever had the impression during her time in the VTF that the issue of prophylactic development was being left behind, Bingham agreed.
“I absolutely felt that, yes, from late October 2020,” she said.
The government did not make an advance purchase of Evusheld and it was never supplied, much to the consternation of charities who warned of the impact on immunocompromised individuals, although it was available privately.
Bingham said the direction of travel on Evusheld was clear to her before she left her post in December 2020, adding she vehemently disagreed with it.
“I felt very strongly that we were conducting a strategy that was not following the prime minister’s goals,” she said. “So the government was following a very clear two-tier strategy where the clinically vulnerable, immunocompromised patients were being deprioritised in favour of those who were able to receive vaccines. And I felt that was manifestly wrong, both ethically and morally, but also did not follow the goals that we’d been set, which was to protect the entire population.”
Bingham also revealed frustrations with Whitehall, noting no one within BEIS had relevant expertise when she arrived, and criticised “groupthink” within government.
“And, more importantly, no one’s ever done anything. They’re all busy writing policy papers and sending each other stuff to review. None of that actually gets to the heart of what it is they’re trying to do. What are they trying to achieve? And are they measured against the delivery of their goals? And the answer is no,” she said.
“In the private sector, you don’t deliver your goals, you’re out of a job, and you have to move on. And in the private sector, you get referenced, and if you don’t perform, people know about that. That is not the way it works in the civil service.”
