Transcript of Module 2 Public Hearing on 12 October 2023
(10.00 am)
Lady Hallett: Mr Keating.
Mr Keating: My Lady, my Lady. May I call Dr Stuart Wainwright, please.
1. Dr Stuart Wainwright
DR STUART WAINWRIGHT (affirmed).
Questions From Counsel to the Inquiry
Mr Keating: Thank you, and do sit down. Could you give your full name, please.
Dr Stuart Wainwright: I’m Stuart Wainwright.
Counsel Inquiry: And it’s Dr Stuart Wainwright, isn’t that correct?
Dr Stuart Wainwright: That’s correct.
Counsel Inquiry: And you’re somebody who has got a long history in the civil service. Am I right that you are a civil servant rather than a scientist?
Dr Stuart Wainwright: That’s right. I was a civil –
Lady Hallett: You can’t be both?
Dr Stuart Wainwright: So I was a civil servant for 20 years, recruited originally as a science fast streamer.
Mr Keating: Can I invite you to keep your voice up, and both of us will try to keep our voice up so that the stenographer can hear us. Secondly, pace. There is a stenographer who is recording what we are saying, so between us if we could avoid speaking over each other and pacing it accordingly. I may ask you to pause from time to time really just to allow everyone to digest your evidence and to allow the stenographer to capture your evidence. Is that okay?
Dr Stuart Wainwright: Of course.
Counsel Inquiry: You provided two witness statements to the Inquiry, which we’re very grateful for. The first witness statement is dated 23 August, we see that in the top right of the screen, and if we go to page 30 of that document, we see that you’ve signed that statement. That’s signed 23 August and it’s the statement of truth, and that’s correct; is that the position?
Dr Stuart Wainwright: It is correct.
Counsel Inquiry: In relation to the second witness statement, that’s dated 31 August, so the following week, and we see it’s 23 pages and at the last page, page 23, you again sign the statement of truth.
Dr Stuart Wainwright: That’s correct.
Counsel Inquiry: Thank you.
Turning briefly to your professional background and really an overview of your evidence today, Dr Wainwright, and perhaps if we could have your first statement open at page 3, at paragraph 0.2. You’re here really as director of GO-Science, which we’ll explain in a moment, but in relation to your background, your doctorate, is it right that we see at paragraph 0.3 that you have a PhD in microbiology?
Dr Stuart Wainwright: That’s right.
Counsel Inquiry: And a degree in genetics from the University of Sheffield?
Dr Stuart Wainwright: That’s right.
Counsel Inquiry: And you’re also a policies fellow of the University of Cambridge’s Centre for Science and Policy. As you say, that is scientific background.
Dr Stuart Wainwright: Yeah.
Counsel Inquiry: Then you joined the civil service, and you were civil service for a number of years, and you set those out in your statement at paragraph 0.4, a number of different departments.
Dr Stuart Wainwright: That’s right.
Counsel Inquiry: But perhaps of relevance is that you were in the Cabinet Office?
Dr Stuart Wainwright: Yes. I mean, I was a civil servant for 20 years in a range of different organisations, and I guess the two main things that I did in my career was roles relating to the use of science and to resilience.
Counsel Inquiry: In terms of resilience, whilst in the Cabinet Office, you were on the Civil Contingencies Secretariat, CCS?
Dr Stuart Wainwright: That’s right, I was there twice, originally as a more junior member of staff in around 2010 to 2012, and then just before joining GO-Science for four years.
Counsel Inquiry: So that would have been 2017 to – or 2016 to –
Dr Stuart Wainwright: 2015 to 2019, I think.
Counsel Inquiry: Thank you.
You were involved in a number of significant emergencies during that time?
Dr Stuart Wainwright: That’s correct. Quite a large number. Salisbury poisonings, collapse of Carillion and Monarch, so quite a range of incidents, yes.
Counsel Inquiry: 2017, a pretty intense year, with a number of terrorist attacks and the Grenfell Tower fire?
Dr Stuart Wainwright: That’s correct.
Counsel Inquiry: Then you moved into preparing for Brexit?
Dr Stuart Wainwright: That’s right. The last year and a half in Cabinet Office, my role changed to understand what a no-deal Brexit might mean and to try to get the country as prepared as it could be.
Counsel Inquiry: Against that background of science, academia, civil service, you joined GO-Science in December 2019?
Dr Stuart Wainwright: That’s right, the middle of December 2019.
Counsel Inquiry: Probably hoping for a little bit more of a quieter life?
Dr Stuart Wainwright: I – it was supposed to be a more strategic role, but of course then events took off and the great majority of my time was on Covid for the first 18 months.
Counsel Inquiry: In terms of your evidence today, the purpose of you attending is, as you were the director of GO-Science, we want you to help to explain to the public and those who are here the scientific structures which SAGE was involved in. So we want you to help us with the systems, number one, and then after that part two will be exploring some of the comments and criticisms which were made about SAGE, its structures, its composition, and to give you the opportunity to comment upon those and consider lessons learnt.
Dr Stuart Wainwright: Yeah.
Counsel Inquiry: So in relation to part one, there is a sea of acronyms involving SAGE, which we should, but perhaps won’t, know all of them.
Dr Stuart Wainwright: Yeah.
Counsel Inquiry: So our collective task is trying to make that a little bit more –
Dr Stuart Wainwright: Sure.
Counsel Inquiry: – digestible and accessible today.
So let’s turn to GO-Science. Director of GO-Science from December 2019 until June 2023?
Dr Stuart Wainwright: That’s right.
Counsel Inquiry: What is GO-Science?
Dr Stuart Wainwright: So GO-Science is a relatively small part of government, technically it’s just a directorate of what’s now the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, then it was Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, but it’s kind of semi-independent from that department.
To be able to understand what GO-Science is, you need to understand science and government more generally.
Science is needed in almost every area of policy and operations, and every government department or almost every government department has their own chief scientists and teams of scientists and agencies. Some of those are very large, huge capabilities, such as MoD or DEFRA, and some departments have much smaller capabilities, and it’s their job, the chief scientists in those departments, to ensure that science is provided to input to policy and operations in those departments and made good use of.
GO-Science sits at the heart of government, really to do two things and support the Government Chief Scientist. At the time of the pandemic that was Patrick Vallance, it’s now Angela McLean. And the two things that we do to support the GCSA, one is to produce science advice to the heart of government, that’s Number 10, Cabinet Office and Treasury, on whatever they need it on. It was Covid in this case but it might be net zero or artificial intelligence, whatever the big issue is of the day. And the second big mission is to support all of government in doing science better. So that meant we recruited chief scientists for departments, we ran the science and engineering profession across government, things like that.
Counsel Inquiry: We can actually go to paragraph 1.1 of your statement and you touch upon the Government Chief Scientific Adviser, the GCSA the acronym –
Dr Stuart Wainwright: That’s right.
Counsel Inquiry: That sets out there what his role is, which you’ve just told us about, really, it’s to provide scientific advice to the Prime Minister and members of Cabinet, advising the government on aspects of science or policy and ensuring and improving the quality and use of scientific advice and advice in government. The GCSA [the Government Chief Scientific Adviser] … reports to the Cabinet Secretary.”
Is that correct?
Dr Stuart Wainwright: That’s right.
Counsel Inquiry: GO-Science’s role, and your role, is really to – largely to enable him or her to complete that task?
Dr Stuart Wainwright: That’s exactly right. So our role is to support the Government Chief Scientist and my role was to help sure that that happened and the organisation was well run.
Counsel Inquiry: Yes. If we turn over a page to page 6, at paragraph 1.3, you talk about the two major missions of GO-Science:
“… firstly: science advice mechanisms that are efficient, effective, speak truth to power and are embedded permanently in government systems; and secondly, achieving visible impact through both proactive and demand led science advice that is relevant, excellent and delivered fit for purpose.”
Dr Stuart Wainwright: That’s right.
Counsel Inquiry: “Speak truth to power”, that’s something which you’ve included in your statement as one of the major missions. What do you mean by that?
Dr Stuart Wainwright: So, I mean, the role of a civil servant generally is to provide objective and impartial advice, and that’s absolutely right. For scientists, that becomes even more so. In any area of policy or operations, government is going to want to have an honest, accurate, objective view of the science that it’s needing to contend with. So that’s about providing truth, and uncertainty as well, to those who need to make decisions.
Counsel Inquiry: You say truth and uncertainty. What do you mean by – is science certain? That’s probably a very deep question, but you mentioned the word “uncertainty”.
Dr Stuart Wainwright: So science and indeed other forms of evidence is rarely totally certain. I mean, you know, we know the world is round now, okay, but rarely in these situations is science totally certain. There’s things that we know, there’s things that we know with some level of confidence, things that we might think we know with little confidence, and there’s things that we just don’t know. And, you know, part of the role of scientific committees and advisers and the officials that supports them is to be able to present that coherent view of what the science says, but also the level of certainty that we have in what we’re seeing and what we don’t know.
Counsel Inquiry: Let’s move on to SAGE, a phrase which everybody is no doubt familiar with.
Dr Stuart Wainwright: Yeah.
Counsel Inquiry: What does SAGE stand for?
Dr Stuart Wainwright: So that stands for the Science Advisory Group (to government) [in] Emergencies.
Counsel Inquiry: We see at paragraph 2.3 overleaf that you describe this as:
“… an ad hoc independent advisory group that is convened to provide scientific advice to support decision-making in COBR in the event of a national emergency … activated by the Cabinet Office or as a ‘pre-SAGE’ on a precautionary basis by the GCSA.”
Dr Stuart Wainwright: Yeah.
Counsel Inquiry: Is that a fair summary?
Dr Stuart Wainwright: It is.
Counsel Inquiry: It’s perhaps obvious in the name, it’s advisory?
Dr Stuart Wainwright: That’s exactly right. So it’s an advisory committee to COBR. There’s a document, which I know you have, which lays out what SAGE is and how it works. That’s the – it’s a Cabinet Office publication, and that makes clear that SAGE is an advisory committee to the COBR committee. But of course COBR can set up a whole range of different advisory committees on all sorts of things.
Counsel Inquiry: Yes, so in terms of composition of the SAGE group, you say it’s not a permanent body?
Dr Stuart Wainwright: No.
Counsel Inquiry: It has no standing membership. How would the membership be selected for a certain emergency, and by whom?
Dr Stuart Wainwright: So just as COBR’s a very flexible mechanism, so is SAGE. You need the expertise in the room for the situation at hand. So, for example, SAGE was activated in the eruptions of the Icelandic volcanos in the early 2010s, so that was a totally different set of people participating in the SAGE meetings than for the pandemic.
So how those people are selected, there’s usually a starter standing roster for each major risk area of the sort of experts we might turn to, and those get regularly reviewed, but at the start of an event, we’d liaise with the Government Chief Scientist and any other major relevant chief scientist, the Chief Medical Officer in this case, to add to that list, and that would be the starter list. But as situations evolve you might need more scientific advice.
I would say usually round that table is a combination of roughly two sorts of people: scientists from within government and its technical agencies, so in this case PHE, and external academics. Usually a mix of those. Sometimes you have industry scientists for other risks as well.
Counsel Inquiry: Thank you. Could I invite you just to slow down a little bit more?
Dr Stuart Wainwright: My apologies.
Counsel Inquiry: Not at all, not at all.
In terms of SAGE itself, in its current structure, it’s been mobilised nine times since 2009; is that correct?
Dr Stuart Wainwright: That’s correct.
Counsel Inquiry: And different structures before 2009 had been activated for the BSE, mad cow disease, and other incidents such as swine flu in 2009?
Dr Stuart Wainwright: That’s correct.
Counsel Inquiry: Okay.
SAGE, as you say, doesn’t advise, it doesn’t make decisions or set policy; is that correct?
Dr Stuart Wainwright: That’s correct.
Counsel Inquiry: Is that an important distinction?
Dr Stuart Wainwright: Very much so. I mean, it’s – I mean, in any situation, but particularly some kind of national crisis, there’s very tough decisions that have to be made, and we live in a democracy so it’s right that our policy decision-makers make those choices reflective of how society feels. To do that they need to take account of a wide range of evidence. Some of that is science, so this is just about providing science advice. But then the decisions are made by ministers.
Counsel Inquiry: One input into central government decision-making?
Dr Stuart Wainwright: That’s right.
Counsel Inquiry: In relation to “consensus advice”, that’s a term you use, and that’s at paragraph 2.1, you mention that:
“It brings together a range of experts and delivers consensus advice in the form of minutes.”
Dr Stuart Wainwright: Yeah.
Counsel Inquiry: So the vehicle for the advice, in writing, are the minutes, that’s quite important; correct?
Dr Stuart Wainwright: That’s right.
Counsel Inquiry: And “consensus advice”, what does that mean?
Dr Stuart Wainwright: So in a rapidly evolving situation, you bring together a range of scientists from different disciplines, and they’ll bring to bear what they know, what they don’t know, what we’re relatively certain about, what we’re uncertain about, and the SAGE meetings allow them to bring together that – all the evidence and the science that they do understand and also what they don’t, and the minutes have to try to capture that consensus view that emerges, that the chair in the meetings will usually try to sum up after each agenda item what they think they’ve heard and what the consensus is, and if people disagree with that at the time, then they can – we’ll talk about it more, and then he’ll try to replay what the consensus is.
The minutes are the formal representation of that consensus that emerged from the meetings, so they should say what the science says, certainty levels, but also what we don’t know as well.
Counsel Inquiry: Is there any downside to this process of having just consensus advice formulated within the minutes?
Dr Stuart Wainwright: I don’t think so. So as well as the minutes, of course, the GCSA and, in this case, the CMO will also have been giving advice orally to ministers on the back of that advice, very much using the written advice as the anchor. I mean, the written advice, it has to be done at pace and speed. I mean, if I compare this to a very different world, so the world of climate change, where you have the international panel on climate change, which also works through consensus statements, but it can take months and years to produce that consensus. In this situation, we don’t have months and years, we have hours. So they are written at speed.
Counsel Inquiry: So consensus at speed?
Dr Stuart Wainwright: You’ve got it.
Counsel Inquiry: But is there a downside, in a sense, that contrarian views are significant but minority views might be excluded from what’s reduced to writing?
Dr Stuart Wainwright: Potentially. I mean, it’s not so much views. The – within a SAGE meeting, you’ll have different perspectives on the evidence, and in early stages people will have different evidence and data to hand, because it’s so fast-moving. You might get different views on how to interpret that. If that’s the case, we try to reflect that difference of interpretation in the minutes as best we can. I mean, it’s possible we may not always have got that entirely right. Although we never – very rarely would we send round the minutes for active comment. After they had been issued to attendees and to Cabinet Office as well, occasionally some of the participants might come back and say, “Actually I think you need to tweak this part”, and we would.
Counsel Inquiry: You mentioned that GO-Science is at the heart of government, but also is that – in terms of the source of government scientific advice, is SAGE the only source of government scientific advice in an emergency?
Dr Stuart Wainwright: No, not at all. And as I explained earlier, every government department or most government departments have their own chief scientist, teams of scientists. Some of them have huge scientific agencies.
Counsel Inquiry: Yes.
Dr Stuart Wainwright: The Met Office or Environment Agency or, in this case, Public Health England, and very often in emergencies, SAGE isn’t needed. So if I take the example of floods, you’ve got two highly technical agencies in the mix, the Environment Agency and the Met Office. Most floods happen, they need an awful lot of science, but there’s no role for SAGE usually, unless something unusual has happened. So the only time SAGE, in my recollection, has been activated for a flood is twice. One was when the Somerset levels refused to drain, so that was unusual, and the second was when the Toddbrook Dam was at risk, and again that was unusual, but mostly the government can rely on its good scientific technical agencies for that particular risk.
Counsel Inquiry: So SAGE is not automatic?
Dr Stuart Wainwright: No.
Counsel Inquiry: It’s something to be activated.
So let’s turn to SAGE during the pandemic, a number of meetings, we know. And you’ve set this out at paragraph 2.6, that SAGE was internally mobilised on 3 January?
Dr Stuart Wainwright: Yeah.
Counsel Inquiry: And the first SAGE meeting was on 22 January 2020; is that correct?
Dr Stuart Wainwright: That’s correct.
Counsel Inquiry: We see also at paragraph 2.5, going back, that SAGE met 105 times from January 2020 to February 2022, and that’s the longest continual period for which it had been convened since its inception?
Dr Stuart Wainwright: Yes, by a very long way.
Counsel Inquiry: In terms of the volume of work, and it’s tucked away in that paragraph there, over 1,200 papers were produced or considered by SAGE by April 2022, so a huge amount of work was done?
Dr Stuart Wainwright: That is correct, yeah.
Counsel Inquiry: It’s fair to say this was an unprecedented time for GO-Science, and the team, which you led, supporting SAGE; is that correct?
Dr Stuart Wainwright: That is correct. And we were a very small organisation going into this, 60 people in total. SAGE team was five people, as I recall. By the end of April we had I think around 80 people just working on SAGE, 24/7.
I think it’s – I’d just like to say here that, I mean, what really formed SAGE was two sets of people: huge numbers of academics, I think almost 200 in total, who gave their time for free, and then officials from within GO-Science, across government, and many of the government science agencies, who joined us, again to give up their time. And I want to say a huge thank you to both groups of people, and in particular the independent scientists, who gave their time for free.
Counsel Inquiry: In relation to what you say, that the SAGE group, in terms of secretariat, there was a massive scaling up in relation to that?
Dr Stuart Wainwright: It was, we had to grow very quickly in just a month or two.
Counsel Inquiry: Drawing upon other colleagues in other departments in the civil service?
Dr Stuart Wainwright: So really four routes. We switched off most of what GO-Science did elsewhere and steered most of our staff towards it. There was a cross-government mechanism for getting staff from elsewhere in place that we got some people from, but it quickly ran out. We brought in a lot of mid-career academics, including some who worked with some of the SAGE participants, and then the biggest cohort was we put out a call to – there was also science fast streamers, but the biggest cohort was from science government agencies, so Met Office, Dstl, and particularly the Environment Agency, who gave us an awful lot of people. So they just came to our help and I can’t think them enough.
Counsel Inquiry: In terms of the composition, we see at paragraph 2.6 that the GCSA, the chief scientific officer, and the CMO, the Chief Medical Officer, assembled a group of experts from key disciplines –
Dr Stuart Wainwright: Yeah.
Counsel Inquiry: – particularly medicine, public health, epidemiology, virology and behavioural science; is that correct?
Dr Stuart Wainwright: That’s correct.
Counsel Inquiry: What role did the Chief Medical Officer have in SAGE? Was he originally meant to be involved in SAGE? Was that something in the original parameters, or was he brought in?
Dr Stuart Wainwright: No, he was always involved, right from the start, and the working assumption is that for a health emergency the CMO is the co-chair. I mean, in effect, Patrick Vallance acted primarily as the chair in most of the meetings. Chris would be a very sort of active – Chris Whitty, sorry – participant in support of him. There were occasions when Chris Whitty would take on the sort of full chairing role as well.
Counsel Inquiry: In terms of the members, you mentioned, you’ve touched upon that there were SAGE members, experts in the field –
Dr Stuart Wainwright: Yeah.
Counsel Inquiry: – both within government, other departments, and also outside government, and that the latter group were doing this pro bono, this was a public service for free?
Dr Stuart Wainwright: That’s exactly right. As things went on for a long time, for some of them, I think it was in the autumn of 2020, we paid their universities to be able to backfill their roles, because they didn’t have time to do their teaching duties, so we paid for their teaching duties to be covered by others, some of them.
Counsel Inquiry: The workload, without labouring this too much, in relation to those SAGE members, they were working all day, evenings, weekends; is that fair?
Dr Stuart Wainwright: It was incredibly hard for everybody. I mean, the pandemic had an absolutely huge effect on everyone, and I just want to acknowledge the grief of the families who are here today, and all of the awful sort of impacts that happened to the people that you know. It affected all of us in absolutely terrible ways, and I greatly respect your bravery in bringing this all to light.
For our people working on this, yes, the academics and the officials, it was very long hours, very long days, for months on end.
Counsel Inquiry: If I could move on to paragraph 2.13, on page 12, you mention that as the pandemic response grew, an official from each department was invited to attend SAGE, and there was:
“… other departmental officials … Cabinet Office, DHSC, HM Treasury … and No 10 attended as observers to allow them to hear the discussion directly, to feed in any required policy perspectives and to ask questions.”
You mention that they did not contribute to scientific advice, that this is normal practice.
I just want to hone in on the part of that passage where you say that they would feed in any required policy perspectives. What do you mean by that?
Dr Stuart Wainwright: So, this is good practice for science advisory committees generally. Government operates a huge range of policy advisory committees, SAGE is just one for emergencies. Officials like this I think need to attend for two reasons. One, in case they need to provide that context as to what the policy challenges are, what are the issues that they think the government is contending with and struggling with, and that can help with what sorts of science advice might need to be provided. But if we take – SAGE commissions itself foremost in two ways, it gets commissioned in two ways. The first is that it will get asked things by the policy customers, Cabinet Office and, in this case, Department of Health, but it also self-tasks: what it considers to be the scientific challenges and questions it tasks itself. But for these sorts of officials, it’s good for them to be there to frame what they think the policy challenges are, that helps the committee, but also it’s good for them to hear the discussion, you know. So then when they are back trying to weave together, as should happen in the best of times, different forms of advice, they have a better understanding of what the scientists are actually saying.
Counsel Inquiry: Thank you.
Lady Hallett: So I think it’s both reactive and proactive? I think I’ve heard other witnesses suggest it was only reactive to questions it’s posed.
Dr Stuart Wainwright: It was mainly reactive, but at the start you might ask, for example, if there was, you know, a particular item on – I don’t know, say, in the autumn, you know, on sort of, you know, should we have another lockdown or NPIs or whatever, they might be asked at the start of the agenda item: Could you give us a sense, Cabinet Office representative, of what’s the policy challenges at the moment. That would sometimes happen.
Mr Keating: I’m going to revisit this topic in part two, when we discuss strategic direction and whether there was sufficient strategic direction.
Dr Stuart Wainwright: Yeah.
Counsel Inquiry: Let’s move on to structure, and in terms of structure there was SAGE and there was a number of subgroups, and perhaps we can bring up a brief organogram which might assist in relation to that. That’s INQ – we have it just there, thank you very much.
You mentioned in your evidence, in your statements, that some pre-existing specialist groups of experts were called upon, and that includes, I’m going to use the acronym first, SPI-M. We see that tucked away there, I hope. Is SPI-M on the list? Right in front of me.
Dr Stuart Wainwright: They are.
Counsel Inquiry: So Scientific Pandemic Insight Group on Modelling? So there was a pre-existing group in relation to that; is that correct?
Dr Stuart Wainwright: That’s correct.
Counsel Inquiry: And that was activated. What was the role, briefly, of SPI-M, just to assist a member of the public to understand what SPI-M did?
Dr Stuart Wainwright: So SPI-M is a committee that stands all the time that the Department of Health run, and it advises them on – it provides modelling of potential diseases. When some kind of disease, significant disease outbreak is coming, the SPI-M-O, which I think stands for operations –
Counsel Inquiry: Correct.
Dr Stuart Wainwright: – gets activated by the Department of Health and provides sort of rapid modelling for the Department of Health and PHE.
Counsel Inquiry: This became a subgroup of SAGE in January 2020?
Dr Stuart Wainwright: That’s correct.
Counsel Inquiry: Am I correct in understanding the chairs were Professor Edmunds and Professor Angela McLean?
Dr Stuart Wainwright: Yes, so originally it was just – no, it wasn’t Professor Edmunds, it was Graham Medley, the chair.
Counsel Inquiry: Yes.
Dr Stuart Wainwright: Angela got made co-chair I think sometime in March.
Counsel Inquiry: Next acronym, which was a pre-existing subgroup, NERVTAG?
Dr Stuart Wainwright: That’s right.
Counsel Inquiry: We see that in front of us. So NERVTAG means New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group. Perhaps we can see why it’s called NERVTAG?
Dr Stuart Wainwright: That’s right.
Counsel Inquiry: Again, what was the role of NERVTAG?
Dr Stuart Wainwright: So, again, another existing group that meets anyway, I think it’s actually a statutory group, and run by the Department of Health and PHE, now UK Health Security Agency, and this provides not just modelling advice but they have virologists and geneticists and various kinds to advise on a wide range of emerging respiratory viruses.
Counsel Inquiry: Am I right in understanding that Professor Horby was the chair?
Dr Stuart Wainwright: That’s correct.
Counsel Inquiry: Yes. There was a number of other subgroups which were set up by SAGE. You’ll be pleased to know I’m not going to ask you about every single one of those. I’m going to touch upon some of those, please.
Let’s, as a general point, why were other subgroups set up?
Dr Stuart Wainwright: First of all I’d say that not all of these groups here were set up by SAGE, so some of them were set up elsewhere, but – and they were doing their own jobs, but SAGE would draw on their expertise and what they were doing.
So CO-CIN, at the bottom left, the PHE Serology Working Group, were set up independently but we made use of them anyway.
But subgroups, as the pandemic grew, and the needs of government to understand what was happening, and as more data and science emerged – I mean, remember in January we knew next to nothing, but as, gradually, more data, more science emerged, you could make more sense of things.
Counsel Inquiry: Would it help if I went through a few examples?
Dr Stuart Wainwright: Please.
Counsel Inquiry: It might help. So we’ve got general – you’ve made a distinction that some were set up elsewhere but would feed in?
Dr Stuart Wainwright: That’s right.
Counsel Inquiry: And then some were set up as a result of the needs of government, and let’s go to three examples –
Dr Stuart Wainwright: Please.
Counsel Inquiry: – which we’ll hear evidence about this week and next week.
Dr Stuart Wainwright: Excellent.
Counsel Inquiry: SPI-B, which is on that list as well, B being the significant word, behaviours, the Scientific Pandemic Insights Group on Behaviours?
Dr Stuart Wainwright: Yeah.
Counsel Inquiry: What was the role of SPI-B?
Dr Stuart Wainwright: So SPI-B had been activated, I understand, in the – during swine flu, and had been run by the Department of Health, but we took this on here and it really is to bring together a wide range of social scientists to provide that social science and behavioural advice to government, so an understanding of how different groups might react, and hopefully to aid communication.
So particularly as advice got steered towards non-pharmaceutical interventions as well as public health, and epidemiology being important, you need to understand how people are going to react as well.
Counsel Inquiry: So to summarise the evidence in your statement and to assist you, we don’t need to turn to it, but you mention in your second statement, at paragraph 1.9, that:
“… behavioural and social science was recognised as an important component of the overall scientific understanding and advice during the pandemic response.”
And we will hear from –
Dr Stuart Wainwright: Yeah.
Counsel Inquiry: – the cochairs, Professors Rubin and Yardley shortly, and you said that SAGE discussions included behavioural science advice throughout the period when SAGE was active, and in fact Professor Rubin attended the first SAGE meeting in January 2020 –
Dr Stuart Wainwright: That’s right.
Counsel Inquiry: – and subsequent meetings.
SPI-B, the subgroup, the SAGE subgroup, was set up formally on 4 February 2020 to provide independent expert advice?
Dr Stuart Wainwright: That’s right.
Counsel Inquiry: In relation to behavioural advice provided to government, to your knowledge, was SPI-B the only source of that type of scientific advice?
Dr Stuart Wainwright: No, I don’t think it was. There’s a lot of social scientists within different departments in government, PHE, Department of Health, Cabinet Office, all had social scientists, and in particular Cabinet Office also had the Behavioural Insights Team, who also were providing advice, but those organisations would come and input to SPI-B, but I imagine many of them were providing advice themselves.
Counsel Inquiry: The Behavioural Insights Team was led by Professor David Halpern; is that correct?
Dr Stuart Wainwright: That’s correct.
Counsel Inquiry: We’ll be hearing from him later on in this module.
The next group is the Ethnicity Subgroup, and in fact we’ve already heard from the chair of that group.
Dr Stuart Wainwright: Yeah.
Counsel Inquiry: Professor Khunti gave evidence yesterday. That was set up on 22 August 2020; is that correct?
Dr Stuart Wainwright: That’s correct.
Counsel Inquiry: Perhaps we can bring up your second statement at paragraph 2.40, please, dealing with the question of those from ethnic groups and the impact of Covid on them.
So if you look at paragraph 2.40 on page 18, please, you mention that:
“The understanding of the impact of [Covid] on at risk and vulnerable groups developed through the pandemic, and was considered frequently by SAGE.”
And you add:
“Some groups were at increased risk of infection …”
You talk about:
“… employment-related exposure; others were at increased risk of poor outcomes (hospitalisation and death) or Long Covid once infected …”
And you talk about the “mix” of reasons why that was.
You also mention at 2.42 that CO-CIN – and that was one of the subgroups you mentioned that fed in to SAGE – and this is data – that was established in February 2020, and that catalogued data from laboratory-confirmed cases of Covid admitted to UK hospitals. And that data indicated increased mortality in black ethnic groups compared to white ethnic groups in April 2020.
Is that right?
Dr Stuart Wainwright: That’s correct.
Counsel Inquiry: You probably are aware from the wider material that there was a Public Health England report published in June 2020 about the impact of Covid on BME groups?
Dr Stuart Wainwright: Yeah.
Counsel Inquiry: And there was an updated report in August 2020 regarding the disparities in risk and outcomes in Covid-19.
So drawing that background together, we’ve got the data in February 2020, we’ve got the PHE report in June 2020, update in August 2020.
What do you say to the suggestion that the Ethnicity Subgroup should have been set up before August 2020?
Dr Stuart Wainwright: I don’t think I’d agree with that. A consideration of BME and, indeed, impacts on any underrepresented group is incredibly important. And Patrick Vallance’s statement for Module 2 lays out very clearly sort of over several pages sort of when SAGE looks at issues to do with different groups, right back to early February.
I mean, what this shows to me is that the NHS, PHE were considering these issues and trying to build them into their work. It was only as we got into later in the summer that there was enough information for SAGE to form a subgroup to look at this. There might be value in considering setting up these kinds of things earlier. I guess the challenge is: would a greater focus from SAGE or another group earlier have led to greater interrogation of the data? Maybe so, but data was light.
So I think that is something to reflect on, and within the system across science advice, whether it’s DH or PHE or SAGE, maybe there should have been some earlier consideration there. But SAGE wasn’t really asked to get involved with this until that time.
Counsel Inquiry: So just unpacking that, there was a lot in there, so SAGE wasn’t asked to look at the impacts –
Dr Stuart Wainwright: No.
Counsel Inquiry: – on ethnic groups before August 2020, number one, and in reflecting upon it you think that perhaps there would have been benefit if there was earlier focus on it?
Dr Stuart Wainwright: So SAGE did provide advice earlier on this issue, you know, and Patrick’s statement lays this out and there’s quite clearly an example of April there. I don’t know the extent to which PHE and CO-CIN or others were – how much they were investigating ethnicity before this, but I think there probably is a lesson around: across that consideration of public health and science and statistical information, was the right focus brought early enough? I think is a reasonable question.
Counsel Inquiry: And the last point, just to unpack on those series of answers, is data. You mentioned that maybe there wasn’t sufficient data, in your view, which allowed the focus that you think perhaps should have been placed?
Dr Stuart Wainwright: Data generally was a real challenge, particularly for the first year, I would say, of the pandemic. I mean, as, you know, has been, I think, well documented in Module 1, you know, there were not the surveillance systems in place going into this, so the ability to gather data in the first place was highly limited early on. And then the ability to share data across the NHS and PHE and then with academics was also very limited, and that extended to any data relating to ethnicity, and everything else.
So data sharing, or data gathering and then sharing were real challenges that hampered the ability of scientists to research and understand.
Counsel Inquiry: Just dealing with that last point about data sharing, it’s been commented in other publications that SAGE in particular had difficulties with receiving data from intergovernment departments –
Dr Stuart Wainwright: Yeah.
Counsel Inquiry: – right up until May or June 2020. Was that the position?
Dr Stuart Wainwright: Yes, that’s correct, and I think Ian Diamond spoke very well about the challenges in that, and some of the potential solutions, earlier this week.
Counsel Inquiry: Final group, subgroup, I would like your assistance upon, because we’re going to hear from a member who was on that group, is Environmental Modelling Group, the EMG, which included in itself a subgroup, so a subgroup of the subgroup, the transmission working group.
Dr Stuart Wainwright: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: So we’ve got the EMG, the Environmental Modelling Group, was established in April 2020, and that was to provide science advice and modes of transmission?
Dr Stuart Wainwright: Yeah.
Counsel Inquiry: Is that correct?
Dr Stuart Wainwright: That’s correct.
Counsel Inquiry: And the EMG transmission subgroup was established in January 2021, and you mention in your statement, we don’t need to turn to it, that that was to examine further the evidence around transmission in real world settings –
Dr Stuart Wainwright: Yeah.
Counsel Inquiry: – including where transmission was happening. What does that mean?
Dr Stuart Wainwright: So as – by that point the data and the evidence that we had, we had more data around how the virus was moving in real world settings like, for example, workplaces or public transport or hairdressers, whatever. All these things matter quite a lot, because it’s where people tend to meet. So by this stage quite a lot more science and evidence was emerging, so a subgroup was set up to make more sense of that emerging science and data and to be able to help inform more advice.
Counsel Inquiry: So January 2021 we were in the third lockdown?
Dr Stuart Wainwright: Yeah.
Counsel Inquiry: January 2021.
Dr Stuart Wainwright: Yeah.
Counsel Inquiry: Was the work of the EMG transmission subgroup there to inform the relaxation of the lockdown and the pathway out of lockdown 3?
Dr Stuart Wainwright: I’ve struggled to recall, if I’m honest, on that. I don’t think we’d have framed it in that way. I think it would have been more: look, there’s more science and data, there’s obviously a range of NPIs under way in the country, so let’s make sense of the science and data that’s emerged and try to provide policymakers with a clearer sense of what it says.
Counsel Inquiry: We went through a number of the subgroups, we in fact touched upon Long Covid when we were talking about the impact on certain groups?
Dr Stuart Wainwright: Yeah.
Counsel Inquiry: But we will see there wasn’t a subgroup for Long Covid. Was one set up in relation to Long Covid?
Dr Stuart Wainwright: Not to my knowledge, no. I mean, I’d presume that that was set up within the Department of Health, and PHE have focused on that. I hone in a little bit on the name, Science Advisory Group for Emergencies, it’s supposed to be a short-term mechanism, but I would have expected Long Covid to be covered through the Department of Health and PHE.
Counsel Inquiry: But from your perspective, as chief executive of GO-Science for SAGE, which was operational for the longest it’s ever been –
Dr Stuart Wainwright: Yeah.
Counsel Inquiry: – there wasn’t a Long Covid subgroup set up during that two-year period?
Dr Stuart Wainwright: No.
Counsel Inquiry: Was GO-Science asked to consider the risk and advise the risk and impact on those who had Long Covid during your time there?
Dr Stuart Wainwright: I don’t recall. We would need to go back and check the records.
Counsel Inquiry: Okay.
I’m going to move on now to another topic in part A, which is advice. You’ve touched upon this already, about how scientific advice was sought – “commissioned” is your word for it; correct?
Dr Stuart Wainwright: That’s correct.
Counsel Inquiry: And that would normally come from – it’s at paragraph 2.19 of your first statement – the Cabinet Office –
Dr Stuart Wainwright: Yeah.
Counsel Inquiry: – via COBR?
Dr Stuart Wainwright: That’s correct.
Counsel Inquiry: Is that correct? That was the primary commissioner. And in due course that evolved, did it not, with – it perhaps came from the Covid Taskforce in the autumn of 2020?
Dr Stuart Wainwright: That’s correct.
Counsel Inquiry: In terms of how advice was provided to ministers, is it right that it was two-fold. First of all, the minutes, which we have already dealt with, significance?
Dr Stuart Wainwright: That’s correct.
Counsel Inquiry: And secondly, advice from the Government Chief Scientific Adviser and the Chief Medical Officer?
Dr Stuart Wainwright: Yes. When they were presenting orally to ministers.
Counsel Inquiry: Yes.
Dr Stuart Wainwright: Yep.
Counsel Inquiry: So it’s that combination of oral advice combined with the underlying written material which is set out in the minutes?
Dr Stuart Wainwright: That’s exactly right.
Counsel Inquiry: We talked about confidence in terms of minutes. It’s right, isn’t it, that degrees of confidence in advice such as high, medium and low were introduced and included in minutes? Was it the case that there wasn’t at the outset that that –
Dr Stuart Wainwright: Erm.
Counsel Inquiry: – degree of confidence was included but it was – by SAGE 4, 4 February, it was added?
Dr Stuart Wainwright: That’s correct. I think earlier we might have tried to reflect it just generally in the drafting of the minutes, but we moved to that more formal grading at that point.
Counsel Inquiry: So advice would include that level of confidence –
Dr Stuart Wainwright: Yeah.
Counsel Inquiry: – high, medium and low as we touched upon.
Publication of advice and analysis. Perhaps we could turn to your statement in relation to this at paragraph 2.32, page 15.
I can summarise that as we’re waiting to bring it up. In previous emergencies SAGE minutes normally were not published at the time of the crisis –
Dr Stuart Wainwright: Yeah.
Counsel Inquiry: – but they would follow on once the crisis or emergency had concluded; is that correct?
Dr Stuart Wainwright: That’s correct.
Counsel Inquiry: That was normal. It wasn’t exclusively the position but that was normally the way forward?
Dr Stuart Wainwright: That’s correct, yeah.
Counsel Inquiry: In relation to the pandemic, you’ve mentioned at paragraph 2.33 that a batch of SAGE papers was published on 20 March on GOV.UK, and then on 30 March, so there was initial papers were published on 20 and 30 March?
Dr Stuart Wainwright: Yeah.
Counsel Inquiry: Then in due course you mention at 2.35 that all the meeting minutes were published by 29 May 2020?
Dr Stuart Wainwright: That’s correct.
Counsel Inquiry: The topic of transparency and providing those minutes has been subject to a lot of public debate –
Dr Stuart Wainwright: Yeah.
Counsel Inquiry: – and there’s been questions as to whether it was right, two months after the first lockdown, for those minutes, and the participants, to be published. So a couple of questions against that backdrop.
Dr Stuart Wainwright: Sure.
Counsel Inquiry: First of all, who decided that the minutes and participants should have been, would be published?
Dr Stuart Wainwright: So that will have been Cabinet Office and Number 10 who decided. The recommendation from the Government Chief Scientist and ourselves was to publish.
Counsel Inquiry: Was there any initial resistance from government as to publishing the advice?
Dr Stuart Wainwright: I’m not sure I’d regard it as resistance. It was right to publish, and I think it was right to publish for two reasons.
Firstly, this was an event that was affecting everybody, and so it’s right in a situation like that, in my view, to be transparent about the decisions on which decisions are being made.
The second reason, which is more to do with science, is that scientists – it’s a great quality – like to challenge and engage in debate, and they can more readily engage in that if you publish the SAGE minutes and the associated papers.
I think there were three problems with publishing, though, we were worried about, all of which came to pass, all of which relate to: if you only publish the SAGE minutes and not anything else within government.
So the first is that we were concerned that it would lead to greater abuse of the scientists who were supporting us. And it did. So we had to put in place a lot of mechanisms to support them. The second challenge, in our mind, which I think also came to pass, is that it would lead to an unbalanced understanding, and debate, in Parliament and the media. They were only seeing one form of advice – they were not seeing economics or operational or policy advice, they were only seeing one form of advice. And I think that did have a negative impact.
The third reason is that it reduced the amount of time that policy and decision-makers had to make decisions. Now, they managed that, but at times that felt – I imagine that felt challenging for them.
So it was the right thing to publish, and that was the right thing, but there were challenges, as I’ve just outlined, and I think all of those problems came to pass, and hopefully that’s some lessons that can be learned for the future.
Counsel Inquiry: So it was transparency but at a cost?
Dr Stuart Wainwright: Yes, but it was the right thing to do, but there should have been more transparency on other forms of advice.
Counsel Inquiry: One of the issues is to ensure there is a safe space for scientific debate and advice to take place?
Dr Stuart Wainwright: Yeah. And, I mean, I’m very sorry to all of our SAGE participants who received abuse. It affected a lot of them, to a very large extent. And some of them you’ll be interviewing and I hope they’re honest about that. I worry that this situation may have put off other academics from coming forward to help government in future.
So GO-Science put in place a great use of arrangements around comms support, wellbeing support, counselling, security advice and support, which felt like we should never have really have had to do them, but we had to provide that. I think in future events that might be something that the whole of government might want to think about, how it can provide that more fully for these amazing experts who are giving their time for free.
Counsel Inquiry: In terms of advice, one tangential point I just want your assistance upon is this: we have members who are in the subgroup, we have members in the SAGE group, and we know that the vanguard of that is the Chief Scientific Adviser and chief medical adviser giving that advice to politicians. What do you say to the complaints by those on the subgroup, or even on SAGE, that they never really knew how their advice was considered or flowed into decision-making?
Dr Stuart Wainwright: I understand their concerns, and I think it – we could have been better, at times, at – sorry, we and Cabinet Office could have been better at times at communicating things back to them. That did get better in the autumn of 2020, once Cabinet Office had a stronger analytical unit, who really helped engaging the experts on that.
But I think those concerns from a lot of our experts were heightened because the SAGE advice was very public and that was clear what was going on, but nothing else was. So although the SAGE advice was public, the other forms of advice, the basis on which decisions were taken, was not. So as an expert on a SAGE committee you’re left in a situation where your advice is public, but then a different decision is made, not apparently in line with that, and they’re left understanding - thinking, “Well, why?” They were not able to see that because nothing else was published.
Mr Keating: Thank you.
Lady Hallett: Can I just go back to the point about the dreadful abuse of people who, as you say, gave their time, and a great deal of time, free to try to serve the public.
Is one possible answer revealing the nature of the speciality of the scientific advisers without naming them, or does that not meet the test of openness?
Dr Stuart Wainwright: That could be one way to go. That could be a way to go. I was surprised – maybe they think differently individually, but when we did ask the SAGE participants “Are you happy to be named?” they all said yes –
Lady Hallett: They didn’t know what was going to come.
Dr Stuart Wainwright: Yeah, maybe so. I also think you’d have different views on that. I mean, people are different, you know, and some people have got thicker skins than others. I mean, that could be a good way to go. I think that might be right.
Mr Keating: I mentioned that the Chief Scientific Adviser and the Chief Medical Officer were at the vanguard of advice at central government, especially that oral advice, and it’s right, isn’t it, they attended numerous key meetings?
Dr Stuart Wainwright: Yeah.
Counsel Inquiry: You’ve summarised these in your statement, and perhaps I could do that here.
Dr Stuart Wainwright: Yeah.
Counsel Inquiry: The Cabinet, they would attend Cabinet meetings –
Dr Stuart Wainwright: Yeah.
Counsel Inquiry: – on occasion, by invitation; COBR meetings; and the various ministerial implementation groups, the MIGs, which we’ll hear about in due course –
Dr Stuart Wainwright: Yeah.
Counsel Inquiry: – which was one of the structures for decision-making which was implemented –
Dr Stuart Wainwright: Yeah.
Counsel Inquiry: – in April/May 2020, and they were succeeded by something called Covid-O and Covid-S, Covid-O for operations and Covid-S, strategy, they were the new structures which were brought in, and again they attended those –
Dr Stuart Wainwright: Yeah.
Counsel Inquiry: – and provided advice. Then there was regular updates or meetings, bilateral meetings with the Prime Minister on occasion, or at Prime Ministerial dashboard meetings which took place on certain mornings –
Dr Stuart Wainwright: Yeah.
Counsel Inquiry: – in Downing Street, and also at quad meetings, which would be the meetings involving the Prime Minister, Chancellor, Health Secretary and the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster?
Dr Stuart Wainwright: Yeah.
Counsel Inquiry: So in terms of that vanguard, they would attend multiple key decision-making meetings and provide that advice?
Dr Stuart Wainwright: Yeah. That’s correct.
Counsel Inquiry: In terms of other areas of work which were undertaken, and a huge amount of work was undertaken, but you mention sometimes that there was other entities which – or organisations which SAGE would call upon, and an example perhaps of this is the Academy of Medical Sciences, AMS, and they were commissioned to prepare a report, “Preparing for a challenging winter 2020/21”?
Dr Stuart Wainwright: Yeah.
Counsel Inquiry: And that was published in July 2020, and they did the same for the next winter?
Dr Stuart Wainwright: Yeah.
Counsel Inquiry: What was the rationale upon commissioning the academy to do that work and to publish that report?
Dr Stuart Wainwright: So we made – we have – GO-Science always has a good relationship with all the scientific academies, and particularly the four main ones, the Academy of Medical Sciences, the Royal Society, the Royal Academy of Engineering and the British Academy, and they, like the rest of the scientific community, were keen to help with the national effort.
In this case, of AMS, it was felt, look, with the networks they’ve got of the best medical scientists in the UK, SAGE is still embroiled in the – sort of very much the day-to-day advice that’s needed, we asked AMS to look a bit longer term and work with its members to produce an independent report on this. Which they did, and then, you’re right, in a subsequent year.
So this was that a great example of the wider academic community working to produce a slightly longer looking report than SAGE would have been able to at that point.
Counsel Inquiry: It wasn’t the longest period to be horizon scanning for –
Dr Stuart Wainwright: No.
Counsel Inquiry: – but it was really there to try to assist, was it, decision-makers in terms of considering the issues?
Dr Stuart Wainwright: That’s correct.
Counsel Inquiry: Were these reports, to your knowledge, highlighted to governments and key decision-makers?
Dr Stuart Wainwright: Yes. So I recall that for a range of these from the large academies when they came out we would communicate them within government, say: look, go look at this report that’s been produced.
For some of them we may have offered teachings on them and arranged for the academies to speak to policymakers. I can’t recall if that one happened with this one or not, but generally we tried to make sure that they were known, but to what extent they were picked up, I can’t say.
Counsel Inquiry: You can’t say whether there was traction or capacity in relation to considering those reports?
Dr Stuart Wainwright: I think others would have to answer that.
Counsel Inquiry: A discrete subtopic is the relationship between GO-Science and SAGE with the devolved administrations, which you touch upon in your statements. You mention this at paragraph 6.1 of your first statement, on page 28, that the devolved administration representatives were regular attendees of SAGE and that they received all SAGE minutes and papers at the same time –
Dr Stuart Wainwright: Yeah.
Counsel Inquiry: – as Whitehall departments.
Pausing there for a moment, was there a little bit of an issue that they didn’t get the first few minutes of SAGE?
Dr Stuart Wainwright: A little, perhaps. So representatives from all of the DAs were invited I think from 11 February, and that was usually a range of participants in the DAs, so that was SAGE 6. Before then there’s a – all of them will have received the minutes – might have been a slight problem with Northern Ireland. So the minutes go in sort of two directions, they would go to Cabinet Office and then to COBR. All of the DAs were on COBR and would have received them at that point. They also went across the chief scientists network as well, so Scottish and Welsh CSAs would have received them right from the start. Northern Ireland did not have a singular CSA at that point, so they would have not received them through that route initially. However, from February 11th they would have done. Northern Ireland do now have a CSA, I should say on that.
Counsel Inquiry: Just pausing there, and I’m very grateful. So in terms of the co-ordination –
Dr Stuart Wainwright: Yeah.
Counsel Inquiry: – and distribution information, two mechanisms. Number one, the minutes?
Dr Stuart Wainwright: Yeah.
Counsel Inquiry: And number two that they were attendees at the SAGE meetings?
Dr Stuart Wainwright: Exactly. And I think that’s important.
I take a step back. Usually in a crisis situation the DAs get involved at COBR and they receive all the information, and they can make sense of it and do what they want. And that happened here.
SAGE is not a body to represent all parts of the country, it’s there to get the experts together who need to be there to advise on particular matters. As it became clear the scale of the pandemic, but also that the devolved governments might be making different decisions on the back of it, it was right to have the chief scientists and the chief medical officers from all the nations there, because they might need to, in their own governments, talk about the SAGE advice in depth. So it was right to involve them from that early stage.
Counsel Inquiry: And it’s implicit in your answer, but each of the devolved administrations had their own chief scientific adviser?
Dr Stuart Wainwright: Northern Ireland did not at that point.
Counsel Inquiry: They had a departmental chief scientific adviser?
Dr Stuart Wainwright: That’s right.
Counsel Inquiry: But for the other nations, they had their own independent advice?
Dr Stuart Wainwright: Exactly.
Counsel Inquiry: And there was co-ordination, was there not, between the CSAs, asterisk not Northern Ireland?
Dr Stuart Wainwright: Well, Northern Ireland, quite quickly their health CSA filled that space, you know –
Counsel Inquiry: Yes?
Dr Stuart Wainwright: – from early February, and co-ordination with the CSAs happened in two ways from within GO-Science, and probably more ways elsewhere. So there’s the CSA network, which meets every Wednesday all of the time. It’s a great group for bringing together all the chief scientists from the UK Government and the devolved administrations to support each other and to learn together. But in relation to Covid, as it really took off as well, we established a mechanism called the Science Co-ordination Group in May of 2020, which wasn’t to discuss science, but it brought together the chairs of all the subcommittees, PHE, the CSAs from the devolved administrations, key chief scientists from government, to co-ordinate who was doing what and what was going to what committee.
Counsel Inquiry: Thank you.
Dr Stuart Wainwright: Separately – I mean others will answer this – I know the comms met regularly. To what extent PHE engaged with their counterparts, I do not know.
Counsel Inquiry: Okay. I’m going to pause there for a moment.
In 60 minutes we’ve dealt with the first part, explaining –
Dr Stuart Wainwright: Apologies.
Counsel Inquiry: It’s not apology at all.
Hopefully we’ve met our first challenge, to try to explain how the science structures worked in terms of GO-Science, SAGE, the subgroups, how advice was commissioned, and then moving on to the attendance of those key advisers and key decision-makers and how the devolved administrations fitted in. So I’m very grateful in relation to that.
In the remaining time I want to turn to part two, which is some of the work that has been done and the analysis which has been done in relation to the issues which you faced over those two plus years in your role during – as chief executive.
Could we turn to the Institute for Government report, “Science advice in a crisis”, which is dated December 2020. That’s INQ000063070.
Whilst we’re waiting for that to be brought up, you’re familiar with this report?
Dr Stuart Wainwright: Yes, I am.
Counsel Inquiry: And you’ve had the opportunity to refresh your memory –
Dr Stuart Wainwright: That’s right.
Counsel Inquiry: And it’s no doubt something which, whilst in your role, you considered with care, one assumes?
Dr Stuart Wainwright: Of course.
Counsel Inquiry: If we could turn, please, to page 5 of that report, and the fourth paragraph is probably worth – by way as a preface, it says:
“No system would have been flawless in responding to such an emergency. It is easy to criticise decisions with the benefit of hindsight, while decision makers (and those advising them) had to respond very fast.”
That’s a feature you make – a comment you make in your statement –
Dr Stuart Wainwright: That’s right.
Counsel Inquiry: – that we have to consider the context of decision-making:
“Nevertheless, our research has identified some clear problems: while there are improvements those providing scientific advice should reflect on, the biggest concerns are the way the government used this advice and the way it communicated it.”
I’m going to ask you questions really regarding the sort of GO-Science/SAGE aspect, under are a few topics, if I may, just to help you.
The first topic is strategy, and if we have that page open and pan out, please, second last – in fact the last paragraph, this is:
“Decision making at the centre of government was too often chaotic and ministers failed to clearly communicate their priorities to science advisers. This was most acute in the initial months but a lack of clarity about objectives persisted through the release of the first lockdown to recent decisions over the second lockdown and regional tiers.”
Pausing there, so in terms of strategy, do you have any comment to make in relation to that? Did you find, as the chief executive, that there was issues regarding the failure to clearly communicate priorities to scientific advisers?
Dr Stuart Wainwright: Yes, I’d agree with much of the tenor of this paragraph from the Institute for Government. I think it changed over time. I think initial – I’m not quite sure where to start.
Lady Hallett: At the beginning.
Dr Stuart Wainwright: It’s a very good place to start.
So, I think this went through quite different phrases. I mean, I think in the early couple of months there was actually some good examples of trying to bring together departments, the NHS, experts, to try to understand what was going on, and to try to formulate advice. But things were evolving so quickly that you have to manage the evidential, the policy, the political quite closely to be able to navigate that and adapt your objectives as you go. So there were some good attempts to do that, and initially there were people, I would say, who were in Cabinet Office in the first few months who understood how to interact with science fairly well. But it was an extraordinary situation and whether the formulation of national objectives was clear enough, I’m not sure that it was.
I think then there was a phase from after there was the change in governance to the MIGs when I think the formulation of science commissioning from the centre got quite chaotic for quite some time.
Mr Keating: This is about May 2020?
Dr Stuart Wainwright: April/May 2020. Gradually got better through the summer and then got a lot better, I think, when a much stronger analysis unit was created in the C-19 secretariat in the autumn, and again that was rebuilding Cabinet Office’s capacity to engage in science evidence and analysis and statistics, and then the questions got better.
I – one of the documents you sent me last night to look at was parts of Neil Ferguson’s statement. I agree with much of the analysis in that, not quite all but much of it, and within that he said that the setting of objectives was often very short term, when there was setting of objectives, and I agree with that. I think it had to be initially. You know, in a very fast-moving event sometimes you do need to just look at the here and now to an extent. But that setting of longer-term objectives, I agree, was absent for quite some time. However, I recall, I can’t remember if it was March or April, that there were attempts to set a longer-term strategy. I remember Mark Sedwill commissioning the now permanent secretary of FCDO, Philip Barton, to lead work to look at a long-term strategy. That looked good to me but it seemed to disappear.
Counsel Inquiry: Thank you.
I would like to turn to page 18 to perhaps give an illustration of the issue that was being experienced, so page 18 of that report, please, and the second last paragraph:
“SAGE members told us that in the autumn they were still unclear about the government’s thinking, despite the new Covid cabinet committees having been created in June with the aim of clarifying decision making. One interviewee described the conversation between ministers and SAGE as circular: ‘Ministers said: “What should we do?” and scientists said: “Well, what do you want to achieve?”’ Some back and forth is necessary to refine questions, but scientists said minsters’ objectives remained unclear throughout the crisis.”
What do you say in relation to that? Is that a valid observation?
Dr Stuart Wainwright: I think it is for that point in time. I say, I think it was a little better earlier, you know, prior to mid-March, and it was better later. I think you need much more discussion across policy officials, operators of key services and experts at these times to help determine what it is you were aiming for, and I’m not sure there was enough people in Cabinet Office with scientific skills at this point who understood how to try to frame the questions.
Counsel Inquiry: I’m going to move on to framing the questions in a moment, but this is a wider point, really, isn’t it, in terms of strategic direction?
Dr Stuart Wainwright: Yeah.
Counsel Inquiry: Let’s move on to commissioning, then, which is the next point, which really flows on from your answer. If we would turn back, please, to page 5, and that paragraph we had looked at at the outset, the bottom paragraph. It says this:
“At times the process of commissioning advice – COBR asking questions for SAGE to answer – did not work well, with advisers’ ability to provide useful answers hampered by poorly formulated questions (though [your point] this improved as the crisis went on).”
Is that correct, that there was, especially at the outset, poorly formulated questions in terms of seeking advice?
Dr Stuart Wainwright: I think that’s right. I actually think it wasn’t so bad very early on, although it – I think the scale of what people had to contend with meant that it was hard to formulate the question.
So early on, as you discovered in Module 1, you know, there weren’t sufficient plans for things like non-pharmaceutical interventions in place, and I agree with the analysis of many people in Module 1 that PHE did not go in with sufficient capacity into this.
In that context, to shift from a position where I think no one ever believed sort of a lockdown could happen in a society like ours to it happening, you had to overcome a lot of public health and policy and political beliefs and dogma. That was hard, and I think needed to involve scientists, policy officials, politicians engaging closely.
But the commissioning of advice did get quite chaotic and poorly formulated from March through into the summer and then got better again in the autumn.
Counsel Inquiry: If we could turn to page 19 of this report, independent report, and you touched upon speed as one of the issues, and at page 19, the penultimate paragraph:
“The government was also slow to seek advice from SAGE on issues where it was evident some time in advance that difficult policy decisions would have to be made.”
It gives an example about return of students to universities and how SAGE was not commissioned to look at this until it was almost too late.
“Members told us that, since they were not asked for advice on some key issues, they started to set some of their own research questions based on what they thought would be useful to policymakers.”
So two questions flow from that. Firstly, was that right, in your view, that the government was on occasion slow to seek advice from SAGE on issues?
Dr Stuart Wainwright: I think it’s a bit more nuanced than that. I think by this point – we talked about the lack of capacity of PHE and others going into this situation, and SAGE had to grow into something that it was never meant to be, to fill some of the gaps that were just not there going into the pandemic. We didn’t have a lot of standing public health capacity on the scale that we needed it going into the pandemic, so a mixture of academic volunteers and a small number of officials filled that gap. I mean, this is the kind of example when you might want a SAGE view, but you might just want – in a better situation, you might want to draw on your public health experts within your public health agency. So maybe they were slow to seek scientific advice but whether SAGE advice was needed I think is a question.
Counsel Inquiry: Let’s examine that for a moment. SAGE grew into something it wasn’t ever meant to be. Was it the case that there was a vacuum which SAGE had to fill because other departments were unable or perceived to be unable to fill that?
Dr Stuart Wainwright: I think I mostly agree with that. I suppose the feeling for us through late February and into March was a feeling of other parts of government either not being there or not being allowed to be there, in some cases, and – but science, technical advice, public health advice was needed and we had to grow our structures to be able to provide that. That wasn’t out of design, certainly not by desire, but I think it was out of necessity.
Counsel Inquiry: You’ve hinted at it, but was PHE one of those organisations which you would have thought would have been asked to do some of the work which SAGE undertook?
Dr Stuart Wainwright: That’s correct.
Lady Hallett: Is that a convenient moment, Mr Keating?
Mr Keating: Very convenient, thank you.
Lady Hallett: You’re all right if we take a break? You’ve got time this morning?
The Witness: Of course.
Lady Hallett: Very well, I shall return at 11.30. Thank you.
(11.13 am)
(A short break)
(11.30 am)
Lady Hallett: Mr Keating.
Mr Keating: My Lady, thank you.
Lady Hallett: Sorry, there was just one matter I wanted to raise, Dr Wainwright. You said earlier that the representatives of the devolved administrations attended SAGE and COBR. Was that throughout, was it that they were invited to attend but –
Dr Stuart Wainwright: So for SAGE, from SAGE 6 in – February 11th, they were always invited to attend. Whether they did or not, the minutes will show that.
COBR, I mean, people from Cabinet Office would have to confirm that. My understanding was that they were always invited but it’s possible I may have that wrong.
Lady Hallett: We’ll check that. Thank you very much. Sorry, Mr Keating.
Mr Keating: Not at all, my Lady.
Dr Wainwright, we’re coming to the end, on this part two of your evidence. There’s three more topics I’d like your assistance on before giving you an opportunity at the end to reflect upon what went well, in your view, and what could be learned by way of lessons.
So in terms of the next topic, which flows from what we discussed before the break, you mentioned SAGE grew into something that was not meant to be. Let’s look at the IFG report, please, at page 6. Page 6. It will be the third paragraph.
In terms of issues which were thrown up, it says:
“… SAGE was not designed to take on such a prolonged role.”
At this stage, December 2020, it had only met 70 times.
Drawing on what you said just before the break, was that a fundamental difficulty, that SAGE was scaling up to do something it was never meant to do over a prolonged period of time?
Dr Stuart Wainwright: Yes, but at necessity I think we had to do it at this point. But I think, you know, a lesson to learn from this is to try to make sure your public health agency has – and the Department of Health, has sufficient capacity and capability to perform all the roles that might happen in other nations.
Counsel Inquiry: Pausing there for a moment, because you have mentioned the word “capacity” of PHE, Public Health England, at that time, and SAGE had to scale up to fill this lack of capacity?
Dr Stuart Wainwright: Yeah.
Counsel Inquiry: Why was it not the case, from your understanding, that PHE did not scale up to meet this challenge?
Dr Stuart Wainwright: So I think for a couple of reasons. I think you’ve got an issue about capacity, capability and trust, and I think GO-Science, the system it was able to put in place was able to deliver on those. I think we were able to deliver the capability, three sorts of capability. We were able to draw on the real international experts, through our academic experts, so the people who really knew their stuff. Secondly, we had sufficient people within GO-Science who understood science and policy. That’s the capability that we had. But we had to grow it. Thirdly, we had people who understood how to operate in a crisis. And we needed that. So we had the capability, particularly that academic capability.
Trust, I mean, others will have to comment on this, but we had the trust of Number 10 and Cabinet Office, I think because we provided that capability.
Counsel Inquiry: From your dealings, bearing in mind you had to scale up SAGE, were you aware of concerns regarding the lack of capability or confidence in PHE to deal with this crisis?
Dr Stuart Wainwright: Yes, I think I was aware of the lack of sort of capacity and capability in PHE. Even from previous roles I’d seen – they have some wonderful people in PHE but they always seem very thin on what was available. The issue of trust others will have to comment on that but my perception in February and March is that gradually the centre began to trust what GO-Science and SAGE were doing, and possibly not other parts, but I don’t know the reasons for that.
Counsel Inquiry: No.
The next topic is composition and challenge, and if we could turn over to page 7, please, the top of page 7, and again it’s one of these features we have touched upon already.
Dr Stuart Wainwright: Yeah.
Counsel Inquiry: And it’s not something which is, perhaps, surprising to you in terms of a – as a criticism, but it says this:
“The GCSA and CMO should reflect, however, on the criticism that there could have been more challenge built into the scientific advice process. While they clearly thought hard about how to do this, scientists inside and outside government argued that SAGE has still been dominated by too narrow a group of medical scientists and modellers at the expense of others such as external public health experts.”
And, as I say, this was a criticism made in the past about previous SAGE. And public health experts again is something which is touched upon a number of times as an area where there seemed to be a lack of expertise. What do you say in relation to that criticism?
Dr Stuart Wainwright: I think this is actually quite complicated. I don’t – there is a challenge here, but I don’t – I don’t think the solution is quite as simple as what’s being suggested here.
So, first of all, do I think SAGE had challenge within it? Absolutely. I mean, the way that it worked, the individual academic groups would be challenging themselves and each other, they’d bring things to subgroups and challenge each other there, and bring it to SAGE and challenge each other more. And we drew on more and more experts – you know, almost 200 for SAGE alone over time. But I think, as we’ve said already, that as SAGE was so prominent and maybe leaned on more than it should have been, it meant that some of the areas where you might have had – drawn on more experts on public health, within PHE structures – we’ve given SAGE more of an ability to challenge those, which might be a better system – I think that is something to reflect on.
So I think a lot of challenge happened within SAGE in the system, but I think given so much focus on using SAGE, I think you reduced its role to sort of challenge other parts of the system where other forms of advice might have been brought to bear much more.
Counsel Inquiry: I would like to turn to page 33, which draws out the fact that this is a complicated area, to use your terminology. Perhaps starting at the top of page 33, and we touched upon the subgroups earlier on this morning in the first part of your evidence, it says there that the subcommittees played an “important role in giving SAGE depth and analytical capacity”, and that:
“… there is a strong case in such a broad-based crisis for using them to ensure a wide range of disciplines are contributing to advice.”
So a positive –
Dr Stuart Wainwright: Yeah.
Counsel Inquiry: – comment there, and perhaps something to consider when we’re looking at diversity and composition?
Dr Stuart Wainwright: Absolutely.
Counsel Inquiry: If we pull out, then, into the wider page for a moment, it says this, in the middle of the second paragraph, that your organisation, the Government Office for Science, “launched wider initiatives to incorporate a range of expertise and challenge”.
So this is something which was identified you did prior to December 2020?
Dr Stuart Wainwright: Yeah.
Counsel Inquiry: Very briefly, what did you do to draw upon a greater range of expertise and create challenge?
Dr Stuart Wainwright: Yeah, so this is something that I think we improved on as we went. In the early days of the pandemic, this is before people were using Teams and Zoom, and so we were constrained a bit by – had to get the right experts in a room or on a phone line. It seems odd to be saying that now, but that was a slight constraining factor. So we worked with CMO and PHE to try to get the right experts there, and there were a lot of public health experts there. The switch to more electronic ways of working, although it was a challenge to do it initially, helped us draw in many more people. I mean, you still have to keep the meetings practical and only draw together the experts that you need, but it allowed us to go to many other parts of the country and other institutions to draw on people.
We in GO-Science we did a process of regular reviews of how we were doing, the first one was kicked off in March 2020, and we did those regularly to have a process of continuous learning, and that’s now been built in Government Office for Science into an active programme called the SAGE Development Programme, to keep it live, to keep us always getting better. One of the issues that was drawn out in that learning early on was a need to draw on academics from a greater range of institutions, and also to build in more diversity in terms of their backgrounds as well.
So that was gradually improved and was built into our thinking from there. But again, I try to think about sort of what the Inquiry might conclude. Do I think the early stages had enough experts? I don’t think more experts would have made a difference, if I’m honest.
Counsel Inquiry: I’m going to move on to another topic. The final topic is communication. In fact if we go to page 16 and 17 of this report.
It’s a phrase which we’re all very familiar with, about “following the science” and the opinion of the authors that ministers and systems – that they were “following the science” was inaccurate and damaging. And that may be questions for politicians and not to you as a civil servant, but I want to draw out some of the issues in relation to this, and whether these are matters that you raised as a problem with government during your time as chief executive.
So in relation to that phrase, it says in the second paragraph or third paragraph:
“The phrase blurred the line between the scientific advice and policy decisions.”
Do you agree, first of all, with that proposition, that the phrase blurred the line between the scientific advice and decision-making?
Dr Stuart Wainwright: I do.
Counsel Inquiry: And the next paragraph, in the same theme:
“The difference between being led by the science and being informed by the science may seem subtle, but it is important.”
And again that this is something which is not new and had been raised before in previous inquiries.
Dr Stuart Wainwright: I agree. In a situation like this, there’s no easy decisions, and it’s right that – ministers – we live in a democracy and ministers are the elected representatives of our people, and in a situation like this, it’s right that they have to balance up different factors and forms of advice, science, public health, economic, operational, policy, and it’s the understanding of all of those that should inform their decision, not one form of evidence.
Counsel Inquiry: So I want to ask you a question in relation to this, which is the impact of that phrase on your members, your SAGE members, and if there’s anything done to it.
If we turn over to address it, turn overleaf, please, page 17, first paragraph, it says there that it “undermined the protective space in which scientists advising the government could operate”.
Was that something, as an impact, that was raised to you by members, about the difficulties the phraseology by ministers was causing them?
Dr Stuart Wainwright: Yes, I mean, as I said earlier, in this period it felt SAGE was being lent on probably to a greater extent than it should have been, but also as we gradually published our minutes and nothing else was published, again it created this impression, I think, that that’s all that there was. And I think that did have a negative effect on the protective space in which our scientists could operate.
Counsel Inquiry: Flowing from the negative effect which you’ve mentioned, final point on this is the next paragraph, and your comment, if you can, in relation to this:
“Many scientists including members of the SAGE went as far as to say that they felt they were being set up as scapegoats, with politicians hiding behind a cloak of science.”
In relation to that, was that a concern which was expressed to you, perhaps informally, by members of SAGE?
Dr Stuart Wainwright: I don’t – I don’t recall.
Counsel Inquiry: Have you raised with government the concern, when you were chief executive of GO-Science, about the usage of the term “following the science”?
Dr Stuart Wainwright: Yes, I recall doing so.
Counsel Inquiry: What was the response?
Dr Stuart Wainwright: Our counterparts in Cabinet Office understood, and gradually, I can’t remember how long it took, but gradually that term did stop being used.
Counsel Inquiry: Finally, we’ve spent some time in the second part talking about the issues which SAGE grappled with during that unprecedented time, and some of the criticisms made of the structure, and you’ve had the chance to comment upon them. But it perhaps is fitting to conclude to give you the opportunity to recognise what SAGE did well.
What, in your view, were perhaps the three big areas that SAGE did well during this time period?
Dr Stuart Wainwright: I think three things. One, we delivered what we were asked to deliver, despite huge pressure, and that was due to the willingness of our volunteer experts and the officials drawn from across government to work night and day to be able to do so. So that sense of doing what was needed for the nation was one thing we got right.
I think underpinning that, our flexibility was a strength, to be able to draw on hundreds of academics and to operate reflexively.
I think the third thing we did well is what I’ve just mentioned: we took an active approach to learning and changing as we went, from March 2020, and that continues on to this day. But that sense of self-evaluation how we could improve was a strength as well.
Mr Keating: Thank you, Dr Wainwright, those are all the questions I have.
My Lady, do you have any questions?
Lady Hallett: No, I have no further questions.
Thank you so much, Dr Wainwright. I do hope the vast majority of the people you have just mentioned with whom you worked understand that the tiny minority of people who think it’s right to resort to personal abuse, well, they’re not supported, the vast majority of us are really appreciative of all the work that you and your colleagues did.
Thank you very much.
The Witness: Thank you.
(The witness withdrew)
Mr Keating: Thank you, my Lady. I’m just going to pass over to Mr O’Connor.
(Pause)
Mr O’Connor: My Lady, our next witness is Professor Graham Medley. Can he be sworn, please.