Covid-19 Inquiry: Scientists showed “too much enthusiasm for the camera” claimed chief adviser

Scientists advising the government during Covid-19 showed “too much enthusiasm for the camera” when sharing their views with the media, according to WhatsApp messages between Sir Patrick Vallance and Boris Johnson.

The UK Covid-19 Inquiry heard evidence from Graham Medley, professor of infectious disease modelling at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and a member of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) during the pandemic. He was shown a series of WhatsApp messages from June 2020, starting with then-prime minister Johnson complaining about scientists offering views that were not aired previously.

In one text, Johnson said: “These Sage geezers now saying we should have gone into lockdown earlier. Can we gently ask them why they didn’t make their anxieties public at the time?”

Sir Patrick, who was the government’s chief scientific adviser at the time, replied: “I think there’s too much enthusiasm for the camera at the moment and will speak to them again. All the minutes of Sage are published and so data recommendations are clear.”

Former Health Secretary Matt Hancock then replied to the messages saying it was “exceptionally unhelpful having individual members of Sage making comments like this, it undermines us all”.

Asked about the messages, Prof Medley said: “I think this is a difficult area in terms of the kind of inside/outside government and independence (of scientists). Clearly the government values independence and wishes to have independent people giving advice and providing evidence.

“Of course, if we’re independent then we can say what we like. In an epidemic, one of the key things that determines outcome is the coherence of the population. And we’re very well aware of that. So, being on message, as it were, supporting government communications, even if you might think that they are personally wrong, puts you in a difficult position.”

He suggested the area was a “minefield”.

Prof Medley also revealed that, although Sage came up with regular consensus statements, there were often different opinions within the group.

He said: “If we didn’t have a consensus statement and a series of ‘five people think this and three people think that’, then potentially you get arguments in public about ‘which is right – the three or the five?' so having a consensus statement I think helps because that does give people a clear guideline of what our position was as a group. But we weren’t asked to follow that in public.

“People quite happily go out, and quite within their rights, go out and disagree with their own consensus, which might sound incoherent but we are independent academics and that’s the nature of the beast. In some ways, it would have been much easier for me and others if they (government) had agreed to pay my salary, compted me into civil service, taking me into Government, then that would have made my life a lot easier, but then I wouldn’t have been independent.

“So that independence question and how you use it across the barrier into government I do think is a critical one for us understanding how Sage works.”