The government chief scientific adviser is intended to create a bridge between the latest developments in research in our universities across to the government and civil service. The post is traditionally filled by parachuting in a leading academic researcher, for (almost always) a limited period of four years. Created by Churchill at the beginning of the Second World War, it has been deemed to be such a success that it has continued to the present day.
But has it remained a success? Or, the better part of a century on, has the pandemic exposed fundamental problems in the science-government relationship? Before coming to judgment on how that crucial bridge between has held up in the current emergency, it is worth revisiting what the post is designed to do and how it has developed since its inception.
Over time the position has evolved very significantly, with a team of civil servants to help deliver on all the demands of the post, based in the Government Office for Science—very appropriately shortened to “GO-Science.” Of course, the personality of the GCSA is a key determinant in how the office is run. I believe the key qualities sought are firstly, world-leading scientific ability at the cutting edge of a field of research, and secondly, the ability to communicate clearly, without excessive jargon but with rigour. I would add that the occupant should have an understanding of policy processes in government, and a broad view of the UK and the world.
Even for a GCSA with these attributes, it is seriously demanding, since the object is to survey all challenges across government, and then to lead an intervention where it is believed that action at the top level is appropriate. Opportunities and risks to the UK often have to be surveyed deep into the future, often going well beyond the normal time span operated on by departments. Opportunities might arise from new innovations developed by our publicly-funded research scientists where the UK is deemed to have a lead, such as in molecular biology or the cognitive sciences. Risks arise when research analysts pick out a future challenge, such as from infectious diseases, climate change or terror threats to the UK and its allies.
In light of all this, the biggest question I asked myself when offered the position in 2000 was: how could I possibly cover the wide range of scientific capability required? I am an expert in physical chemistry, and have a deep knowledge of material sciences, but not the life sciences. However, what I very quickly learned was that my scientific ability could be stretched to any field, provided that I brought into my office the experts in the field for a day or two, and challenged each of them until I felt that I understood the essential elements of their understanding.
The post had been the subject of some media attention in the preceding months. The BSE epidemic in British cattle (“mad cow disease”) in the 1990s resulted in the emergence of a new human brain disease. Here, although scientists had already associated this new human disease with eating beef from a cow that had BSE, John Gummer, the minister then responsible for handling the cattle outbreak, was so at pains to explain to the public that there was no risk attached to eating British beef that at one point he even fed his daughter a beef burger on TV.
[su_pullquote]“With a stronger, transparent SAGE system in place, tens of thousands of lives in Britain would not have been lost to Covid-19”[/su_pullquote]
The result was the Phillips Commission report into the government handling of the BSE crisis. In particular, the report strongly recommended that in future, chief scientific advisers in government should be independent, and be free to go out to the media and explain what their advice to the government was. My predecessor, Bob May, had developed the ability to do this. The report was published in November 2000, soon after my appointment, and I took the same principle very seriously throughout my tenure, persuading both Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, and the cabinet, that it was in the government’s interest for me to be able to go into the public domain to explain my advice on all but security issues. In this way I managed the difficult balance between keeping the trust of the PM and the cabinet on the one hand and the public on the other. It was also of course important to be clear that my position was to give advice, and it was up to the politicians to make decisions. On occasion this did cause some discomfort.When I began in post, polls were demonstrating that trust in science was at a low ebb, and over the following years, although the polls demonstrated a continuing rise in the level of trust, we did face several crises. The most notable was the fall in uptake of the MMR vaccine, which meant that the level of immunity among British children approached dangerous levels, with significant outbreaks of measles in particular. At this time the Science Media Centre was established in the Royal Institution, completely independent of the government and the private sector, and this has successfully raised awareness of scientific issues.
My baptism of fire in the post came with another epidemic in British livestock, the foot-and-mouth disease outbreak in February 2001. Here, aided by Sir John (now Lord) Krebs, I set up a team of epidemiologists, vets, modellers and an expert in capacity capability from the Ministry of Defence to provide advice. At this time it was out of control, increasing exponentially, and being handled entirely by a team of civil servants and their political boss in the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food. Our experts demonstrated, by analysis of the initial phase of the epidemic, how it could be brought under control within days. Once I had reported this to the PM, he decided to hand control effectively over to me, and I was the one to be on TV screens every day to explain what we were doing and what outcomes could be expected. Within a few days the epidemic was fully under control, declining exponentially.
We took several key decisions, which resulted in changes still in place today. I explained to the PM that each government department needed a chief scientific adviser, and his response was supportive, but it was left to each department to respond. At this time only the MoD had a CSA. I had enormous assistance in driving this through from the chair of the House of Commons Science and Technology Select Committee Ian Gibson, and many departments did make appointments. Today, virtually every department has a CSA.
[su_pullquote]“Research showed that a global pandemic was very likely to arise from the mutation of a virus from a wild animal to humans, and could be as deadly as the Spanish Flu”[/su_pullquote]
The second innovation was the creation, from the activity I inherited from the government’s “Foresight programme,” of a fully operational in-depth process. The idea was that we should never be faced out of-the-blue with an epidemic again. I refocused the programme into a means of building scenarios well into the future around risks and opportunities for the UK. Each programme was required to have at least one minister in the chair. Although the focus of these programmes was specific, they were run “systemically,” which means, in government terms, cross-departmentally. Experts were brought in from outside government, never less than 100 for each programme. The biggest, on infectious diseases, saw 340 visit from around the world—30 countries were represented. Typically a programme runs for more than two year. In each programme, four future scenarios are examined, and usually it is very clear which is the desirable scenario and which the least desirable.The final function was to give the government advice on actions to be taken to lead to the desirable outcome. The Infectious Diseases Foresight Programme, for example, showed that a global pandemic was very likely to arise from the mutation of a virus from a wild animal to humans somewhere in the world before 2030, and that once this emerged, the disease would reach every country of the world due to air travel, and since humans would have no prior immunity it could be as deadly as the 1918/1919 Spanish flu epidemic. We advised countries around the world to put in place preparations for such an outbreak.
The WHO was represented on that programme, and its advice issued in early February this year very effectively instructed all countries on how to handle the situation. Sadly— devastatingly, indeed—some countries did not follow this, particularly the UK.
Regrettably, I have to conclude that many of the advantages of providing scientific advice within government through the CSAs have been lost since 2010, when a new command-and-control system was introduced, with every media request being vetted, not by the relevant departmental comms team, but by No 10. In the current pandemic, there has been controversy about political advisers who are not scientists attending the government Science Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE), but even the membership was not initially published—let alone the advice. And today, the advisers are still clearly not free to be interviewed in the public domain.
This is one reason why Independent SAGE, the alternative advisory group of which I am chair, was established. We wanted a mechanism to be available for providing transparent advice to both the government and public at each stage. The members of IndieSAGE are experts drawn from healthcare, epidemiology, viral infections and behavioural sciences. The response of the media and the public to our work demonstrates the need for openness to retain trust in this biggest health challenge to the country for 100 years. With a stronger, transparent SAGE system in place, tens of thousands of lives in Britain would not have been lost to Covid-19, and our economy would already be on the road to recovery.
David King, chair of Independent SAGE, was GCSA 2000-07, former special representative to the foreign secretary on climate change 2013-17, and is founder and chair of the Centre for Climate Repair at Cambridge
