The former head of the vaccines taskforce Kate Bingham is reportedly to be given a damehood.
Ms Bingham, wife of Hereford and South Herefordshire MP Jesse Norman, is said to be among those who will be recognised in the Queen’s Birthday Honours, which will be announced this month.
According to the Sunday Telegraph, venture capitalist Ms Bingham will be rewarded for her efforts during the Covid-19 pandemic.
In her unpaid role as chair of the UK’s Vaccine Taskforce she led procurement of vaccines and helped secure more than 350 million doses of seven different vaccines, including 40 million doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine, and 100 million doses of the jab developed by Oxford and AstraZeneca.
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Last year Mr Norman felt compelled to defend his wife after she became the focus of intense scrutiny after a report appeared in The Sunday Times.
It claimed she had shared commercially sensitive information with financiers at a conference in America.
Later it was reported that she spent £670,000 of public money on a public relations firm.
There were also claims of cronyism over how she came to be appointed in her role, and the public relations firm's ties with people close to the Government.
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But Mr Norman, in a letter to Hereford Times readers, said all his wife's public appearances, including the conference that was the focus of The Sunday Times story, were approved by civil servants at the Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS), which has oversight of her work.
Appearing before a parliamentary joint select committee on November 4, Ms Bingham herself denied any wrongdoing, and described The Sunday Times report as “nonsense”, “inaccurate” and “irresponsible”.
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