Pressure comes amid criticism over decision to keep names and advice of Sage members secret
The Labour Party is pushing the government to publish details of scientific advice it has received during the coronavirus pandemic.
The move comes as clamour grows for less secrecy around the evidence behind crucial decisions in the UK’s response to the crisis.
“If people are going to trust science, science has to trust people,” shadow science minister Chi Onwurah told Research Professional News.
Onwurah and fellow shadow ministers are calling for the government to share scientific advice provided by the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies. “The government is saying they are following the science. If we can have access to that science as well then we will be able to be more supportive of science-driven policy,” she said.
“We do not have the resources of government to inform our decision-making, so I think it would lead to more evidence-based policy on both sides.”
Her comments come amid criticism over the decision to keep the names and advice of Sage members secret.
For example, speaking in the House of Commons on 22 April, Jonathan Ashworth, shadow secretary of state for health and social care, called on health secretary Matt Hancock to publish the explanation from government scientists for why the death rate in the UK was so high compared with Germany’s.
“Will he undertake to publish the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies’ minutes, which have not been published?” Ashworth asked. “Will he also undertake to publish the evidence on why we are following a seven-day rule for isolation? That appears to contradict the World Health Organization, which suggests a 14-day rule for isolation.”
Responding to Ashworth’s concerns, Hancock insisted that the government was “guided by the science” throughout the pandemic. He did not say when or if the Sage minutes would be published.
Meanwhile, the Scientists for Labour campaign group has written to Labour leader Keir Starmer to urge the party leadership to call for all Sage advice and subsequent analysis by the civil service to be made available to the opposition leadership team on an “immediate basis”.
The party should also “support calls from experts writing in The Lancet, and related calls from the Commons Science and Technology Select Committee, for this advice to be made public in an unattributable form on a rolling basis”, said the letter, dated 21 April.
This is in line with procedures for the Scottish government’s Covid-19 advisory committee and the 2011 guidelines on the code of practice for scientific advisory committees, it said.
“Whilst it is reassuring that the government insists it is ‘being guided by the science’, it is difficult to hold to account their interpretations of said science when the opposition, and the public, are not given access to the same information,” Ben Fernando, chair of Scientists for Labour, wrote in the letter.
“This is especially true where divergence between UK government and World Health Organization advice occurs.”