Images: Roger Harris for UK Government [CC BY 3.0], via Wikimedia Commons; UK Government [CC BY-NC-ND 2.0], via Flickr
Advisers to UK government “did not have sufficient freedom to express dissenting views”, says report
Scientific advice to the UK government in the lead up to the pandemic was not broad enough and ministers failed to challenge it, according to the Covid inquiry’s damning first report.
The report, following an inquiry commissioned by the government and led by Baroness Hallett, was published on 18 July. It concluded that in the years leading up to the Covid pandemic, ministers did not have the variety of scientific advice needed.
“The UK prepared for the wrong pandemic,” said the report, highlighting that planning had focused on a potential influenza pandemic.
The report also said there were “fatal strategic flaws underpinning the assessment of the risks faced by the UK, how those risks and their consequences could be managed and prevented from worsening, and how they could be responded to”; that the UK government’s “sole pandemic strategy, from 2011, was outdated and lacked adaptability”; that there was “a damaging absence of focus on the measures, interventions and infrastructure required in the event of a pandemic—in particular, a system that could be scaled up to test, trace and isolate in the event of a pandemic”.
“Ministers, who are frequently untrained in the specialist field of civil contingencies, were not presented with a broad enough range of scientific opinion and policy options, and failed to challenge sufficiently the advice they did receive from officials and advisers,” the report continued.
“Advisers and advisory groups did not have sufficient freedom and autonomy to express dissenting views and suffered from a lack of significant external oversight and challenge,” it also said. “The advice was often undermined by ‘groupthink’.”
The report concluded: “The UK government and devolved administrations’ systems of emergency preparedness, resilience and response failed. The ways in which risk was assessed, strategy designed and advice provided were flawed.”
‘Radical reform’ is needed
Hallett, chair of the inquiry, wrote in her introduction: “There must be radical reform. Never again can a disease be allowed to lead to so many deaths and so much suffering.”
However, she also recognised that scientists were among the individuals who ensured the pandemic’s impact was not even more severe.
“Ultimately, the UK was spared worse by the individual efforts and dedication of health and social care workers and the civil and public servants who battled the pandemic; by the scientists, medics and commercial companies who researched valiantly to produce lifesaving treatments and ultimately vaccines,” Hallett wrote.
The report also noted that because most emergencies involved more than one single department across government, technical information could rapidly be transmitted to other departments that needed it.
“Each scientific adviser [within a government department] could call on the specialist capabilities from within their own department,” it added.
Chris Whitty, chief medical officer for England from October 2019, is quoted as telling the inquiry that the UK’s science advisory system “is complex and not perfect but is considered to be one of the stronger ones internationally”.