Boris Johnson has been accused of harbouring “crony-virus” at the heart of his government by a Scottish MP.
Richard Thomson, the SNP MP for Gordon, called on the Prime Minister to come clean about the jobs for chums at the top of the flailing government fight against covid 19.
In the Commons Thomson drew attention to weekend reports that Kate Bingham, the head of the vaccine taskforce revealed confidential information to US financiers.
Johnson is also under fire over the appointment of Dido Harding as head of the Test and Trace.Both are married to Tory MPs and neither faced competition for their jobs during lockdown.
Harding studied at Oxford with former Prime Minister David Cameron.
Bingham is married to Jesse Norman MP who went to Eton at the same time as Johnson and she went to school with the Prime Minister’s sister.
Thomson called for Johnson to reassure the public that there is not a “crony-virus” in the chumocracy surrounding Downing Street.
He said: “It was reported at the weekend that the chair of the UK Government’s vaccine taskforce showed official sensitive government documents to an event for US venture capitalists, a move which a former chairman of the committee of standards and public life described as seriously ill-advised.
“With jobs being awarded even in the midst of a pandemic, without recourse to open recruitment processes, and billions of pounds of public procurement being awarded without going through open processes, what steps has the Prime Minister planned to take to restore public confidence in the competence and probity of his government and to help reassure people that there isn’t a crony-virus at the heart of his government which requires eradication every bit as much as the coronavirus outside of it?”
Johnson did not respond directly to the accusation.
He said: “I thank people who are working pro-bono on NHS Test and Trace who come under repeated attack, or on our vaccine taskforce and it is thanks to their hard work that the UK is among the frontrunners in being on the verge of being able to deliver a vaccine.
“If and when a vaccine is produced next year, and I must tell the House it is by no means certain, but if and when it emerges, it will be at least partly thanks to their hard work.”
