Why has the UK Government made secret its science advice?

Unpublished letter submitted to The Guardian on 3 May:

There has been much debate in the past few weeks over the secrecy surrounding the reports, minutes and membership of Government’s Scientific Advisory Committee on Emergencies (SAGE)

 

A decade ago, in the autumn of 2009, the then Labour Government decided to consider and issue, by the end of December that year, a set of principles applying to the treatment of independent scientific advice provided to Government.

 

In House of Commons Science and Technology Committee report “The Government’s review of the principles applying to the treatment of independent scientific advice provided to government” Third Report of Session 2009–10 (HC158 https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200910/cmselect/cmsctech/158/158ii.pdf), it records on pager 27 the Labour Government statement:

 

“It is the longstanding view of Government that all independent advice it receives be made publicly available as a matter of routine. This view is clearly laid out in the Government's Guidelines on Scientific Analysis in Policy-making.”

 

Why has the current Conservative government changed this policy?

 

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https://www.gov.uk/government/groups/scientific-advisory-group-for-emergencies-sage-coronavirus-covid-19-response

Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE): Coronavirus (COVID-19) response

The Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) provides scientific and technical advice to support government decision makers during emergencies.

Contents

1. Role
2. Participants
3. Expert groups
4. Scientific evidence supporting the government response to COVID-19

Role

SAGE is responsible for ensuring that timely and coordinated scientific advice is made available to decision makers to support UK cross-government decisions in the Cabinet Office Briefing Room (COBR). The advice provided by SAGE does not represent official government policy.
Find out more about SAGE (PDF, 101KB, 4 pages).

Participants

The group is co-chaired by the Government Chief Scientific Adviser, Sir Patrick Vallance and the Chief Medical Officer, Professor Chris Whitty, and includes experts from within government and leading specialists from the fields of healthcare and academia.

View the full list of participants of SAGE and related sub-groups.

Expert groups

SAGE relies on external science advice and on advice from expert groups. During COVID-19 this includes the:

• New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group (NERVTAG)
• Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Modelling (SPI-M) (Department for Health and Social Care)
• Independent Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Behaviours (SPI-B)

These groups consider the scientific evidence and feed in their consensus conclusions to SAGE.

Scientific evidence supporting the government response to COVID-19

The national and global response to the spread of COVID-19 continues to develop quickly and our knowledge of the virus is growing. These statements and accompanying evidence demonstrate how our understanding of COVID-19 has evolved as new data has emerged.
The evidence was often complied very rapidly during a fast-moving response and should be viewed in this context. The papers presented here are the best assessment of the evidence at the time of writing, and their conclusions were formed on this basis. As new evidence or data emerges, SAGE updates its advice accordingly. Therefore, some of the information in these papers may have been superseded at a later date.

This page will be updated on a regular basis with the latest available evidence provided to SAGE.

Introduction to the evidence

• Coronavirus (COVID-19): scientific evidence supporting the UK government response

SAGE meeting papers

View the full list of meeting papers (CSV, 8.75KB).

Meeting 4, 4 February 2020

• SPI-M-O: Consensus statement on 2019 novel coronavirus (3 March 2020) (PDF, 120KB, 3 pages)

Meeting 6, 11 February 2020

• Influenza vs COVID planning assumptions (10 February 2020) (PDF, 107KB, 3 pages)
• SPI-M-O: Consensus statement on 2019 novel coronavirus (10 February 2020) (PDF, 83.4KB, 4 pages)

Meeting 8, 18 February 2020

• SPI-M-O: Consensus view on public gatherings (11 February 2020) (PDF, 90.2KB, 1 page)
• Review of data on persistence of SARS-CoV-2 in the environment and potential infection risk (14 February 2020) (PDF, 484KB, 7 pages)

Meeting 9, 20 February 2020

• SPI-M-O: Consensus view on the impact of mass school closures (19 February 2020) (PDF, 289KB, 4 pages)
• SPI-M-O: Consensus statement on 2019 novel coronavirus (17 February 2020) (PDF, 85.8KB, 5 pages)

Meeting 10, 25 February 2020

• SPI-B: Return on risk of public disorder (25 February 2020) (PDF, 153KB, 2 pages)

Meeting 11, 27 February 2020

• Potential effect of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) on a COVID-19 epidemic in the UK (26 February 2020) (PDF, 156KB, 3 pages)
• Current understanding of COVID-19 compared with NSRA Pandemic Influenza planning assumptions (26 February 2020) (PDF, 167KB, 5 pages)

Meeting 12, 3 March 2020

• SPI-M-O: Consensus statement on 2019 novel coronavirus (2 March 2020) (PDF, 104KB, 4 pages)
• SPI-B return to SAGE on the use of behavioural and social interventions on a COVID-19 epidemic in the UK (3 March 2020) (PDF, 183KB, 2 pages)
• Potential impact of behavioural and social interventions on an epidemic of COVID-19 in the UK (4 Martch 2020) (PDF, 314KB, 6 pages)

Meeting 13, 5 March 2020

• SPI-B insights on combined behavioural and social interventions (4 March 2020) (PDF, 193KB, 4 pages)

Meeting 14, 10 March 2020

• Potential impact of behavioural and social interventions on an epidemic of COVID-19 in the UK (9 March 2020) (PDF, 267KB, 8 pages)

Meeting 15, 13 March 2020

• SPI-B: Insights on public gatherings (12 March 2020) (PDF, 168KB, 3 pages)

Meeting 16, 16 March 2020

• SPI-M-O: Consensus view on behavioural and social interventions (16 March 2020) (PDF, 43.4KB, 1 page)

Meeting 17, 18 March 2020

• SPI-B: note on school closures (17 March 2020) (PDF, 127KB, 1 page)
• Discussion on London lockdown (18 March 2020) (PDF, 106KB, 1 page)

Meeting 18, 23 March 2020

• SPI-M-O: Consensus view on COVID-19 (20 March 2020) (PDF, 99.5KB, 2 pages)
• Options for increasing adherence to social distancing measures (22 March 2020) (PDF, 347KB, 8 pages)

Meeting 19, 26 March 2020

• SPI-M-O working group on scenario planning, consensus view on COVID-19 (25 March 2020) (PDF, 137KB, 4 pages)

Meeting 21, 31 March 2020

• COVID-19 Genomics UK (COG-UK) Consortium, weekly report 1 (23 March 2020) (PDF, 781KB, 9 pages)

Meeting 22, 2 April 2020

• SPI-B: Easing restrictions on activity and social distancing: comments & suggestions (1 April 2020) (PDF, 135KB, 4 pages)

Meeting 26, 14 April 2020

• Pre-empting possible negative behavioural responses to COVID-19 antibody testing (13 April 2020) (PDF, 553KB, 4 pages)

SPI-B background papers

These papers were produced by SPI-B participants to aid early discussions and understanding of the group.

• The role of behavioural science in the coronavirus outbreak (14 March 2020) (PDF, 178KB, 3 pages)
• SPI-B: Evidence list (6 March 2020) (PDF, 116KB, 4 pages)
• SPI-B: Insights on self-isolation and household isolation (9 March 2020) (PDF, 168KB, 2 pages)

Modelling inputs

Emerging evidence about COVID-19

• Emergence of a novel coronavirus (COVID-19); A protocol for extending surveillance used by the Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGP) Research and Surveillance Centre (RSC) and Public Health England (PHE)
• Early dynamics of transmission and control of COVID-19: a mathematical modelling study
• Inferring the number of COVID-19 cases from recently reported deaths
• Feasibility of controlling COVID-19 outbreaks by isolation of cases and contacts
• Estimates of the severity of COVID-19 disease
• Novel coronavirus 2019-nCoV: early estimation of epidemiological parameters and epidemic predictions
• Estimation of country-level basic reproductive ratios for novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) using synthetic contact matrices
• A spatial model of COVID-19 transmission in England and Wales: early spread and peak timing
• The efficacy of contact tracing for the containment of the 2019 novel coronavirus (COVID-19)

Reports from Imperial College London

• Epidemic size estimation in Wuhan City
• Epidemic size estimation in Wuhan City - update
• Transmissibility of COVID-19
• Severity of COVID-19
• Phylogenetic analysis of SARS-CoV-2
• Relative sensitivity of international surveillance
• Infection prevalence estimated from repatriation flights
• Symptom progression of COVID-19

The models

• BBC dataset
• POLYMOD

Specific pieces of modelling on interventions provided to SAGE

• Impact of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) to reduce COVID-19 mortality and healthcare demand

Contents