Advice to government in the coronavirus crisis

Inside Briefing with the Institute for Government

Institute for Government

News, Politics, Government

4.6 • 252 Ratings

🗓️ 6 November 2020

⏱️ 60 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This is an audio recording of an IfG Live Event The announcement of a second England lockdown came following repeated warnings from the UK government’s scientific advisers about the spread of coronavirus. Throughout the Covid-19 crisis, scientific advice to the government has been highly visible, with Sir Patrick Vallance, the government’s chief scientific adviser, repeatedly sharing a platform with Boris Johnson. Members of the government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) continue to feature prominently across broadcast outlets and in coverage of the government’s handling of the crisis. Other forms of advice, including economic advice from the Treasury, have been far less transparent, often creating the impression that SAGE is the government’s main and most influential advisory body. And yet economic arguments have also featured prominently in the debate about whether and when to lockdown again. How should science advice be combined with other kinds of evidence and presented to ministers? Does there need to be more transparency about the type of advice government is receiving and how it is using it? Does the prominence of SAGE undermine public understanding of other forms of evidence? To discuss these questions, the IfG was delighted to welcome: Professor John Edmunds, Professor of Infectious Disease Modelling at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and participant in SAGE Professor Susan Michie, Professor of Health Psychology at UCL and participant in SAGE and Independent SAGE Lord Macpherson of Earl’s Court, former Treasury Permanent Secretary (2005–16) Nancy Hey, Executive Director of What Works Wellbeing This event was chaired by Dr Catherine Haddon, Senior Fellow at the Institute for Government. #IfGScience See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, good morning and welcome to our IFG virtual events.
0:13.0	I'm Catherine Haddon.
0:14.0	I'm a senior fellow here at the Institute for Government.
0:17.0	So we are back in lockdown, leaving the house only with our reasonable excuses.
0:22.6	Pubs and restaurants are closed. We are eating in to help out.
0:26.6	But the journey to these latest set of restrictions has been more protracted and more disputed than back in March.
0:33.6	We now know that after opening up over the summer, the government had warnings from
0:38.1	its scientific advisors from September onwards about the resurgence of the virus and calls for
0:44.0	a further lockdown or circuit breaker to try and stem the flow of the virus. Case numbers, hospital
0:51.0	admissions and tragically deaths have all been on the rise. The government
0:54.7	say that the worsening picture of what was likely to happen in terms of NHS capacity was the
0:59.4	trigger for going into lockdown again, a lockdown that the Prime Minister previously described
1:05.4	as devastating. Meanwhile, the economic costs are visible both in the data and in its effect on many people's lives.
1:13.6	But the UK government's approach to how it balances economic, epidemiological and other factors is far less clear.
1:21.6	Sage's published reports and minutes can dominate headlines, but the government has resisted calls from their
1:27.8	own back ventures to publish impact assessments of the new lockdown or an economic analysis.
1:33.8	So we wanted to explore how science, advice and economic and other forms of advice are developed
1:39.8	within SAGE, within the Treasury, how they're combined and used within governments, and whether that is causing problems and what can be done about it?
1:48.0	Has the government set up a battle between economic and health considerations that shouldn't exist?
1:53.0	And hugely importantly, how do other forms of evidence and other concerns, well-being, social impacts, operational concerns. How do they fit in? We've got a fantastic
2:03.4	panel to discuss all of this. I'll come to each of them in a moment with an opening question,
2:08.1	but to briefly introduce to them. We have John Edmunds, a professor of infectious disease
	...

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