Hancock Ignorant of COVID-19 Vaccine-Making Process, Former Taskforce Chiefs Say After New ‘Lockdown Files’ Revelation

Britain's Health Secretary Matt Hancock speaks during the daily COVID-19 digital news conference in London, on April 15, 2020. Andrew Parsons/No 10 Downing Street/Handout via Reuters

Two former heads of the UK’s Vaccine Taskforce said Matt Hancock didn’t understand the process of biological manufacturing after new “Lockdown Files” reports revealed disagreement between Hancock and the vaccines chiefs over COVID-19 vaccines deployment.

Hancock reportedly said that Kate Bingham, who headed the taskforce between April and December 2020, was “totally unreliable,” and accused Bingham and her deputy and successor Clive Dix of blocking the government’s attempt to buy COVID-19 vaccines from India when the UK had a supply delay.

Bingham and Dix said Hancock was pushing ahead the way he did because the minister treated it as procurement without understanding the complexity of biological manufacturing.

“The Lockdown Files”  investigation is a series of articles published by The Telegraph on more than 100,000 WhatsApp messages it exclusively obtained of government ministers and officials discussing work during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The messages were released by journalist Isabel Oakeshott, who had been given access to them by Hancock himself when he enlisted Oakeshott’s help to co-write a book called “Pandemic Diaries.”

Since Feb. 28, The newspaper has published more than 40 stories based on some of the messages. The Epoch Times did not review the messages and could not independently verify the context in which these discussions were taking place.

Who to Vaccinate

In one of its latest revelations, published WhatsApp threads appeared to show Hancock discussing Bingham and Dix with colleagues.

In one of the threads, Hancock was sent a link on Oct. 4, 2020, to a Financial Time (FT) interview with Bingham, titled “Less than half UK population to receive coronavirus vaccine, says task force head.”

A dose of AstraZeneca vaccine is prepared at COVID-19 vaccination centre in the Odeon Luxe Cinema in Maidstone, UK, on Feb. 10, 2021. Andrew Couldridge/Reuters

Bingham told the FT that vaccinating the whole population was “not going to happen,” adding: “We just need to vaccinate everyone at risk.”

According to messages, Hancock responded to his then-media adviser Damon Poole by saying he didn’t have access to the article before going ahead to say Downing Street needs to “sit on her hard.”

“But is that Kate?... If so we absolutely need No10 to sit on her hard. She has view and a wacky way of expressing them & is totally unreliable. She regards anything that isn’t her idea as political interference,” the messages read.

Responding to the messages, Bingham said on Sunday she had been following the official advice that was “always determined” by the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation and the government’s vaccination policy.

“I never questioned these—I only ever repeated government policy at the time in 2020. My role was to follow government policy not to create it,” Bingham said.

Indian Supplies

Bingham left the temporary role in December 2020 and was replaced by her deputy Dix.

WhatsApp threads in February 2021 appeared to show that Clive was resistant to the idea of buying vaccines from the Serum Institute of India (SII) , saying those supplies were meant for countries “in desperate need,” and that the UK would get enough supplies in the next months to “vaccinate all adults twice.”

After then-vaccines minister Nadhim Zahawi forwarded Clive’s message to Hancock, Hancock told then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson on WhatsApp that the initial plan to purchase vaccines from the SII in October 2020 had been blocked by Bingham and Dix, saying, “That’s why we kept getting [expletive] excuses.”

A sample vaccine vial is seen in front of the AstraZeneca logo in an illustration photo taken on Sept. 9, 2020. Dado Ruvic/Reuters

Writing in The Telegraph about the revelation, Dix said Hancock didn’t understand how the manufacturing process worked, and that he “panicked” when there was a delay with the AstraZeneca vaccine.

“The manufacturing process was brand new and any process like this is fraught with problems, which we need to fix as we go along, but normally you would spend two or three years stress-testing something like this,” Dix wrote, adding that Hancock in the meantime was “laying down timelines by saying things like ‘we will vaccinate the whole population.’”

Dix said he doesn’t think ministers understood that it’s always tricky to set a date on vaccine delivery, especially when getting a vaccine in a much-accelerated timescale.

“When we said the AstraZeneca vaccine had manufacturing problems, that is when Hancock panicked” he wrote, saying Hancock didn’t get the the taskforce couldn’t change the nature of the process.

“He thought it was like procurement. That is where his behaviour came from. He panicked and that led to them going to India and taking vaccines that had been meant for the developing world.”

Bingham also said that the WhatsApp messages published by The Telegraph “suggest that Matt Hancock was not aware of the published and agreed government vaccine procurement policy, did not read the reports by and about the work of the Vaccine Taskforce, and did not understand the difference between complex biological manufacturing and PPE procurement.”

A spokesperson for Hancock said: “As we’ve seen all week, these stories are wrong as they’re based on an entirely partial account.

“In the case of vaccines, Matt drove the goal of getting everyone vaccinated, often against resistance in the system. Ultimately he prevailed, thank goodness, and we got the first vaccine in the world, for everyone. Matt set all this out in his book.”