Covid-19: Labour demands answers from vaccine head over PR bill

Kate Bingham was appointed chair of the UK's Vaccine Taskforce in May

Labour says the government has "serious questions" to answer over reports that its vaccine chief spent £670,000 on public relations advisers.

The Sunday Times said Vaccine Taskforce chair Kate Bingham had used eight consultants to oversee media strategy.

Shadow cabinet minster Rachel Reeves asked "what exactly was delivered for such a price tag".

Boris Johnson praised Ms Bingham's "fantastic work" in procuring 340 million coronavirus vaccines.

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The government says the spending on PR was signed off by business department officials.

Ms Bingham was appointed chairwoman of the UK's Vaccine Taskforce - an unpaid role - in May, temporarily standing back from her full-time role as a managing partner at SV Health Investors - a life sciences venture capital firm.

On Monday, early results from the world's first effective coronavirus vaccine showed it could prevent more than 90% of people from getting Covid.

The taskforce has ordered 40 million doses from developers Pfizer and BioNTech, plus 300 million doses of other vaccines being developed.

Ms Reeves said there were "serious questions about how taxpayer money is being spent during the pandemic and how the government is being run".

She added: "The prime minister must be transparent about the processes he has put in place to allow such potential breaches of public trust."

Leaving role

Health Secretary Matt Hancock told BBC Radio 4's Today programme earlier: "Frankly what matters is the substance of what the Vaccine Taskforce has done."

He said its work meant the UK was "one of the best-placed countries around the world for access to vaccines".

Labour MP Darren Jones called for Ms Bingham to be sacked, when the issue was raised in the House of Commons.

But Business Secretary Alok Sharma replied that the taskforce had "done an absolutely brilliant job over the last few months".

The government says Ms Bingham was always due to leave her unpaid government role in December.

In the House of Lords, Labour's Lord Campbell-Savours asked why Ms Bingham had "given" the £670,000 PR contract, relating to the taskforce, to the firm Admiral Associates.

A Lib Dem peer, Lord Scriven, claimed one of the company's directors was also a director of the country estate belonging to the father-in-law of the prime minister's chief adviser, Dominic Cummings.

The Financial Times reported the claims earlier.

Lord Scriven asked if it was "gross indulgence" to give a firm the PR work, rather than use government publicity experts, and what "specific tasks" Admiral Associates had been asked to carry out.

For the government, business minister Lord Callanan accused Lord Scriven of making "baseless accusations" and said Mr Cummings had had "no role whatsoever in any of these procurement processes or in any of these appointments".

Details of all firms and contract labour used by the taskforce would be "published in due course, with the usual transparency arrangements", he added.