We invest in our conventional and special forces, we recognise the importance of developing our intelligence services, and we plan and train for a vast array of different scenarios, yet we are neglecting the most likely and potentially most severe collective threat to the nation – the next pandemic.” In the seven months in 2020 that she spent as the unpaid head of the UK vaccine task force Kate Bingham moved mountains. Although the first contracts for the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine had already been signed and work was underway on dozens of others in several countries, the almost unparalleled nature of the pandemic emergency required something else — an ability to put it all together and make it happen.

We failed to meet goal three: to build permanent pandemic capabilities in the UK,” she writes. “Not only are we vulnerable from a pandemic supply perspective, we have also lost an attractive economic opportunity.” Wendy Joseph Interviewed by Susannah Jowitt Unlawful Killings. Life, Love and Murder: Trials at the Old Bailey Exeter College: Marquee 4:00pm Fri 31 Friday, 31 March 2023 See this event But, as she works her way through the list, Bingham has saved her “biggest gripe” for last: leadership, expertise, and a reversion to an “adversarial” relationship with industry since her exit.Alexander Stoddart Interviewed by Gregory Platten Art and Christianity Weston Lecture Theatre 4:00pm Fri 31 Friday, 31 March 2023 See this event

Unless she had insisted on directly reporting to the Prime Minister when she took the job, she “probably wouldn’t have succeeded, because there would have been too many people in the chain telling us we couldn’t do it”. It was a condition she had discussed with her husband, the Conservative MP Jesse Norman, who managed the furlough scheme as financial secretary to the Treasury. The pair soon became known as “Mr Tax and Mrs Vax”. She also thinks the UK’s status outside the European Commission (EC) – who “did a bad job” – allowed the Government to be faster and “more nimble”. I came away buzzing and reassured that we still have in this century a wide ranging community fascinated not just by famous authors (I’ve rarely seen so many concentrated in one place) but by challenging ideas and questions. The VTF had submitted a business case and initial budget to the Treasury, but when she asked the then Chancellor, Rishi Sunak, why approval had not yet been granted, he “had no idea” what she was referring to.

Reviews

Meanwhile, cancelling the contract with Valneva just before its traditional jab was approved by UK regulators limited the diversity of Britain’s vaccine portfolio, undermined investment in a bioreactor plant in Scotland, damaged relations with industry, and limited global rollout. Tanya Goodin and Rory Cellan-Jones Switching off and Switching in: Living in the Digital Age Trinity College: Garden Room Levine Building 12:00pm Fri 31 Friday, 31 March 2023 See this event This is a scary, engaging, no holds bar account of the project to identify and introduce the Covid-19 vaccine. I knew if he [Sykes] didn’t think much about any aspect of our operation, then he’d say so – loudly. Conversely, a seal of approval from him would be as close as I could get to acquiring body armour,” she wrote. Sykes’s review approved of the taskforce’s work in July 2020.

Not only were we building the plane as we were flying it,” writes Kate Bingham, appointed by Boris Johnson in May 2020 to chair the UK Vaccine Task Force, “we were flying in the dark and simultaneously writing the instruction manual, and fielding endless petty questions from air traffic control asking about the strength of the orange juice we were serving to passengers.”Ah ha! That was fun,” she says, a glint in her piercing blue eyes. “We signed the world’s first contract with Pfizer-BioNTech… and it showed Whitehall could work at speed.” While certain individuals excelled and many more worked hard, “process apparently mattered more than outcomes” among civil servants, the Cabinet Office was the “bane of our existence”, and communications teams were “irresponsible… unfocused and patchily competent”. But when it came to the committee discussion itself, the health secretary had traded in Dr Jekyll for Mr Hyde.