Many people will have been unaware that UK governments had chief medical officers and scientific advisers before the pandemic. This week’s testimony to the Covid inquiry from Sir Chris Whitty, Sir Patrick Vallance and other officials is a reminder of the extraordinary process that turned previously anonymous figures into household names. Facing catastrophe, ministers not only needed guidance from experts (even if they didn’t always heed it) but were compelled to televise their advice to reassure the public.
The scale of the challenge could have been better anticipated. Sir Chris, the chief medical officer, told the inquiry that governments have a tendency to underestimate the threat of natural disasters and public health crises relative to hazards such as war.
The government response was not sufficiently “electrified” by the prospect of Covid ripping through the population, even after Downing Street had been briefed that hundreds of thousands of lives were at risk. It is clear from almost all of the witness testimony so far that Boris Johnson’s haphazard prevarications and Matt Hancock’s arrogant complacency aggravated the problem of systemic unpreparedness.
Once the threat was understood there was the challenge of competing economic and social imperatives. The case for draconian measures to halt transmission was weighed against the social and economic cost. Advisers disagreed on these points, with Sir Patrick, the chief scientific adviser, wanting to move “harder and faster” than Sir Chris.
The experts have been refreshingly candid about some of their differences and mistakes, in marked contrast with politicians and political advisers for whom settling scores and shifting blame appears to be the priority. The fact of rival views inside government at a time of crisis is unremarkable. It is Mr Johnson’s inveterate fear of responsibility that meant vital choices went unmade and errors uncorrected.
It didn’t help that the prime minister was “bamboozled” by some of the scientific concepts, according to Sir Patrick. That limitation also applied to some civil servants, according to testimony by Dame Angela McLean, formerly chief scientific adviser at the Ministry of Defence. She criticised the Treasury’s grasp of complex epidemiological models and its handling of data, characterised by “an inability to spot egregious errors”. It is also increasingly clear that the Treasury, under Rishi Sunak, was governed by doctrinaire opposition to lockdown restrictions that was applied in disregard for the risk of increased Covid transmission.
In written submissions to the inquiry, Mr Sunak has said he doesn’t recall any concerns about his “Eat out to help out” scheme. That looks disingenuous at best, given that Sir Patrick said scientific and medical advisers were not informed of the scheme before it launched. He noted that, nonetheless, he would be “very surprised” if the then chancellor had not known that a plan to encourage indoor social mixing would accelerate transmission of the virus. The risks had been widely aired. His diary from the time records Dominic Cummings remarking that “Rishi thinks just let people die and that’s OK”. Privately, Dame Angela referred to the then chancellor as “Dr Death”.
There is still a long way for the inquiry to run. But it is not too early to draw conclusions about the judgment of politicians whose decisions, taken in defiance of expert warnings, may have cost thousands of lives, especially when one of those politicians is now sitting in No 10.
