Image: Duncan.Hull [CC BY-SA 4.0], via Wikimedia Commons
Suggestion comes amid complaints about narrow base of advisory group
The government’s chief scientist has said the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) may add a specialist economics subgroup to help it deal with the coronavirus crisis.
A secrecy row over the membership of Sage was partially defused this week following the release of the names of all its members. But this immediately triggered renewed concern that only a narrow range of disciplines are represented on the group, which feeds advice on Covid-19 to ministers.
At a 5 April meeting of parliament’s Health and Social Care Committee, chief scientist Patrick Vallance (pictured) said Sage is considering setting up an economics subgroup.
But he also said that “Sage can’t become the integration of all knowledge in order to give government advice across every single aspect of this. At some point the output of Sage needs to be integrated with economic analyses from others.”