Kate Bingham - Vaccine Tsar - must go!
Boris Johnson, Prime Minister
Kate Bingham has one of the most important jobs in the country: overseeing the UK effort to secure an effective COVID vaccine. Thousands of lives depend on her work.
But a series of revelations have called her independence into question. Reports in the Times and Sunday Times show that she also works for an investment firm which stands to make money from stakes it holds in companies producing COVID treatments.
We all need total trust that the person doing this job is putting patients and the NHS ahead of private profits and personal gain. Kate Bingham’s apparent conflicts of interest prevent that trust.
Add your voice calling for Boris Johnson to remove her from her role and appoint a new, independent and accountable person to do the job - and publish a full COVID vaccine strategy.
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To:
Boris Johnson, Prime Minister
From:
[Your Name]
Dear Prime Minster Johnson,
Kate Bingham, the UK's COVID Vaccine Tsar, must go. By failing to reveal her firm's investments in companies developing COVID products, revealing insider information to select investors, and acting with little oversight, she has exposed serious conflicts of interest which make her position untenable.
We need to trust that our vaccine strategy is driven by the interests of patients and the NHS, not profits and personal gain. If Ms Bingham fails to step down please urgently remove her from the role and appoint a new independent, publicly accountable person to do this job and publish the full UK strategy on COVID vaccines and technologies.