Kate Bingham: Head of UK Vaccines Taskforce to be honoured with a damehood

KATE BINGHAM, head of UK Vaccines Taskforce will be rewarded with a damehood for her excellent work in helping Britain in its fast rollout of vaccines, The Telegraph has said.

Bingham, 55, in her unpaid role made sure Britain had access to Covid-19 vaccines, by obtaining millions of doses of six different shots.

Her damehood is expected to make the list of honours to be given to "heroes" during the pandemic, to be unveiled in the Queen’s Birthday Honours list next weekend.

Bingham, a venture capitalist with no previous experience in vaccines was surprised when he was tasked by Boris Johnson to lead the taskforce. She said it was a “classic imposter syndrome”, where you are "being asked to do something very publicly, in an area where I was not an expert, made me absolutely question whether or not I could do it."

Married to Conservative minister Jesse Norman, she also faced calls to resign over her decision to bring in eight full-time PR consultants from a London agency, for £670,000.

But the taskforce's success in obtaining vaccines was soon to be hailed as her leadership helped the UK move faster in its vaccine rollout programme.

Britain has now ordered more than 500 million doses of seven of the most promising vaccines, including the four so far approved.