A woman spearheading the UK’s life-saving vaccination drive has launched an attack on civil servants and ministers about their inability to manage the pandemic tonight.
In a powerful speech, Dame Kate Bingham (a venture capitalist) was appointed to head the vaccine taskforce.
The entrepreneur warned the lack of scientific knowledge among mandarins and ministers had left the country ‘woefully unprepared’ for the virus and risked causing problems if the country is faced with a new killer disease.
Speaking at Oxford University she said there was ‘a huge lack of relevant skills and experience’ in the PM’s relatively youthful Cabinet, citing its lack of experience in Stem (science technology, engineering and mathematics) subjects.
She was also critical of former senior ministers, such as Gordon Brown and David Cameron, who have left Parliament rather than remaining on the backbenches offering their expertise.
She gave the Ramones Lecture at the university. A mere third of the members are from non-finance or commercial backgrounds.
“Is it possible that there may be an absence of operational manufacturing experience or non-political industrial experience?”
“Nor is there a flood of junior ministers who are educated in the Stem disciplines. Ministers do not get appointed on the basis of any other skills and they are usually rotated once every 18 months. This means that there’s no opportunity for ministers to develop any expertise in one area.
“And matters within Parliament have not been helped with the recent trend of former prime ministers and chancellors to leave parliament soon after they step down.
“But it is more than difficulty to decide and hold ministers or civil servants responsible. Without this experience, it can be difficult to even frame the right question to consider policy alternatives and choose from among them.
In a powerful speech, Dame Kate Bingham (a venture capitalist) was appointed to head the vaccine taskforce.
She spoke at Oxford University, saying that there is a ‘great lack of relevant skills’ and experience in the relatively young Cabinet.
She was also critical of former senior ministers, such as Gordon Brown and David Cameron, who have left Parliament rather than remaining on the backbenches offering their expertise.
This 56-year old venture capitalist, in the life sciences was appointed to lead the vaccination task force in last year.
The decision to buy jabs deemed most likely to succeed before results were available has been widely credited for helping Britain to start the western world’s first vaccine programme.
She spoke at Oxford University tonight about lessons learned from the vaccine task team.
She criticised civil servants because they rely too much on contractors to build skills, rather than hiring guns.
“The problem was that departments didn’t have the necessary knowledge about commercial biosciences and the technical science to operate effectively,” she stated.
“Less Than 10% of Fast Track Civil Service Officials Have Background in Stem, Lower than the US France or Germany.
“Nor is there a better situation among senior officials. Only three permanent secretaries, the top civil servants in the government department heads with Stem degrees, have been identified. It is an elite group of economists and historians. Very few have worked outside Whitehall.
She attacked the “culture of Civil Service” and said that she saw an almost obsessional desire in officials to keep any criticism or suggestion of error from me. A paranoia over media handling and public reaction.
This resulted in groupthink and a huge aversion towards risk, which in turn slowed down innovation and speeded up execution.
She said: ‘There is an obsessive fear of personal error and criticism, a culture of groupthink and risk aversion’ (File image)