Two years on, Bingham is as aware of the fights she lost as those she won. When she took the role, Johnson gave her three objectives. To secure vaccines for the UK; to ensure shots were distributed equitably worldwide; and to make the country more resilient for next time. Bingham’s husband is Jesse Norman MP, then the financial secretary to the Treasury. Bingham has no difficulty demonstrating that this has nothing to do with anything, but that didn’t stop the Guardian’s jibes, its “chumocracy” tables and the rest. From a remote cottage, Bingham juggled vaccine suppliers, Whitehall, the media circus… as deaths mounted and the world shut down. Political manoeuvring, miscommunications and administrative meddling nearly jeopardised the project. But perseverance and expertise paid off.

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.” 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.” Elias Chacour Interviewed by Diarmaid MacCulloch A Palestinian Christian Working for Peace and Reconciliation in Israel CANCELLED Bodleian: Divinity School 2:00pm Fri 31 Friday, 31 March 2023 See this eventYou may also opt to downgrade to Standard Digital, a robust journalistic offering that fulfils many user’s needs. Compare Standard and Premium Digital here. 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. If there was another new pathogen lapping the globe, Bingham says she’d think twice before agreeing to lead a new VTF. Abandoning the Vaccine Registry, where more than 500,000 people signed up to take part in clinical trials, was short sighted – Bingham wanted this resource to continue post-Covid.

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 was leading a team of experts who would find Covid vaccines that worked, ensure they could be manufactured at scale and then delivered into people’s arms by the end of the year.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.

None of it was inevitable… the biggest risk was whether or not it was even doable [to develop Covid vaccines],” she says. “But within Government, it also felt like we were just pushing water uphill the whole time.” Points of pride The night in Oxford was the most beautiful event I have ever done. Not just the spectacular setting (of the Sheldonian), but an unforgettable evening. Roger Highfield and Peter Coveney Chaired by Irene Tracey Vice-chancellor’s Interview. Virtual You: How Building Your Digital Twin Will Revolutionise Medicine Sheldonian Theatre 12:00pm Fri 31 Friday, 31 March 2023 See this event She stresses that the UK clearly has more manufacturing capacity than it did – the Government bought and repurposed a veterinary vaccine plant in Essex, for instance, while Moderna is setting up an mRNA vaccine manufacturing plant. Britain also invested in training, and expanded vaccine testing facilities at Porton Down. When I arrived, there was an Excel spreadsheet that was being filled out twice a week by the guys in BEIS [the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, which hosted the VTF] to send to the Cabinet Office, so they ‘knew what we were doing’.At the beginning of April 2020 Bingham was told that the likelihood of a Covid-19 vaccine working was 15% at best. However, the first NHS patient received a vaccination on December 8 of the same year and nearly every UK resident has now had the jab. Bingham describes how she juggled suppliers, Whitehall, the media circus and the political manoeuvring and administrative meddling that nearly jeopardised the project. Bingham and Hames also look at how the effective application of science can solve the world’s problems if it is delivered with a sharp focus on outcomes.

Kate Bingham will talk about her book The Long Shot, is an extraordinarily compelling and revealing account of seven turbulent months at the heart of government. Here she tells the full story for the first time, sharing lessons for future pandemics and offering advice on how government can work more successfully with industry. It’s a vital record of a unique moment in history and an inspiration to support the next generation of scientists. For cost savings, you can change your plan at any time online in the “Settings & Account” section. If you’d like to retain your premium access and save 20%, you can opt to pay annually at the end of the trial. How Covid-19 vaccines went from the laboratory to people’s arms – the inside story of an extraordinary national campaign against all odds As governments across the world were scrambling to jump to the front of the vaccine queue in July 2020, Kate Bingham’s phone pinged. This is an incredible account of the behind the scenes efforts of Kate and the VTF which secured for the UK early access to vaccines for COVID. The petty, sometimes malicious behaviour of Government officials and Departments is laid bare and they ought to hang their heads in shame, along with some sections of the British media.

Meanwhile there was a “near total ignorance” about what vaccine manufacturing actually entailed, and a National Audit Office’s investigation that began just two months after the VTF launched was a “foolish and expensive joke”, which wasted time and resources. Brutal critique The vaccine effort was a massive success and a huge team effort from the NHS to the vaccine taskforce, Oxford University to AstraZeneca. Matt is proud that he insisted that everyone across the UK had access to a vaccine, and is delighted the vaccine programme got the UK out of the pandemic ahead of almost everywhere else in the world.