Vaccine hero Emily tasked with making sure the NHS doesn’t squander its billions
A HIGH-FLYING troubleshooter who helped deliver Britain’s worldbeating vaccination programme has been tasked with ensuring that the NHS does not squander its £36 billion cash injection.
Dr Emily Lawson impressed Boris Johnson with the ‘brilliant’ way that she masterminded the rollout of mass vaccinations. Now she has been asked by the Prime Minister to make sure the vast sums of money being handed to the NHS from looming tax hikes are spent ‘efficiently and without waste’.
It comes amid fears among Tory MPs that a £12 billion-per-year funding package to clear waiting lists is at risk of being swallowed by an NHS ‘black hole’.
Dr Lawson, who is said to enjoy kickboxing, has won a reputation as one of the NHS’s most impressive bosses. From November last year to this August, she led a small team of experts based in offices in Admiralty House – a grand 18th Century building on Whitehall – who oversaw the NHS ‘vaccine deployment programme’.
A huge network of vaccination centres and a simple booking system meant the UK outstripped EU countries, with more than a million jab appointments booked each day in June. Sir Simon Stevens, former chief executive of the NHS, said the programme should be a model for how the service is run.
In March, Dr Lawson was filmed close to tears after having had her own jab at the Science Museum. ‘I’ve been working on this for so long, I hadn’t really thought about the moment when I get my own vaccine,’ she said.
She has also revealed on social media that her 13-year-old daughter Phoebe was vaccinated as part of a trial at the Churchill Hospital in Oxford.
‘Today I am proud of my girl, who volunteered to be part of the Covid vaccine trial for 12-17-year-olds,’ she wrote on Twitter.
Dr Lawson worked at management consultancy firm McKinsey and the supermarket giant Morrisons, where she was human resources director, before becoming a senior NHS boss in 2017.
Earlier in the pandemic, as the NHS’s chief commercial officer, she was tasked with solving the health service’s dire shortage of PPE equipment.
Dr Lawson’s mother Annette, 85, is a campaigner for women’s rights, while her brother Ralph, 52, is an acclaimed music producer and DJ.
Last month, she started a new role leading the No10 Delivery Unit, established to boost the Government’s performance and increase Downing Street’s grip over Whitehall departments.