Independent Sage scientists want ‘proper parliamentary scrutiny’ of the £9bn Covid-19 centre
A body set up to coordinate the UK government’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic must be more transparent and subject to proper scrutiny by parliament, two prominent scientists have said.
Concerns over the “secrecy” of the “shadowy” Joint Biosecurity Centre were expressed at a meeting of the Independent Sage, a rival group to the official Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies, on 31 July.
They follow previous concerns that the official Sage was too secretive because it initially withheld information about its membership, minutes and papers—most of which are now publicly available.
“The reason that Independent Sage came into being was because of the absence of transparency around the scientific information, the flow of that information to government, who that information came from and how it was being used,” said Gabriel Scally, president of epidemiology and public health at the Royal Society of Medicine.
“I think we are now in the same situation with the Joint Biosecurity Centre. In fact, I don’t know—and I’ve asked lots of people to tell me, but they can’t tell me—what organisations the centre is ‘joint’ between.”
Scally described the Joint Biosecurity Centre, which was set up recently to take forward operational management of Covid-19 in the country with a budget of £9 billion, as a “shadowy organisation”.
“I can see absolutely no reason why the government shouldn’t be as transparent as it possibly can about its response to this pandemic. That’s the responsible thing to do and that’s what builds confidence,” Scally added.
“Secrecy, poor information and poor communication destroy our collective response, which should be one of collective solidarity. But it’s impossible to have solidarity when there are organisations that are running the show of which we have no knowledge, no insight and no connection.”
Allyson Pollock, co-director of the Newcastle University centre for excellence in regulatory science, agreed, adding that there should have been primary legislation for the centre being set up, as well as “proper scrutiny by parliament”.
Chief scientific adviser Patrick Vallance and chief medical officer Chris Whitty have recently both admitted it was an error for the official Sage not to have been more transparent in the early days of the Covid-19 emergency.