Covid-19: Forecasting and Modelling Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateAnne Marie Morris
Main Page: Anne Marie Morris (Conservative - Newton Abbot)Department Debates - View all Anne Marie Morris's debates with the Department of Health and Social Care
(2 years, 7 months ago)
Westminster HallWestminster Hall is an alternative Chamber for MPs to hold debates, named after the adjoining Westminster Hall.
Each debate is chaired by an MP from the Panel of Chairs, rather than the Speaker or Deputy Speaker. A Government Minister will give the final speech, and no votes may be called on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
I will try to be brief, Sir Edward. The hon. Member for Isle of Wight (Bob Seely) has raised a first-class, crucial issue. Clearly we cannot predict the future, but we can prepare for it. Traditional crisis management and risk management list the possible things that might happen and look at the severity and the likelihood, and based on that we produce a number of models. That is the old way of doing it.
The modern way of doing it, instead of creating models, is to create a playbook—a mechanism by which we can look at all the challenges that might face a country and at least put in place a mechanism for dealing with the crisis, whatever it is. Bizarrely, the US have taken that approach but, perhaps rather sadly and tragically, never used the playbook model that might have saved them.
We very much went down the model route and took out of our kit bag the one we had for flu. It was too rigid, did not fit and was too slow. The assumptions were not challenged; the real world evidence was not incorporated; and, worse, we limited how we looked at modelling absolutely to covid. We looked at the mortality of covid and the impact; we looked at the morbidity of covid and the impact, but we should have looked instead and as well at the impact of the crisis as a whole and the proposed solutions, including the lockdown and other restrictive measures, across the country, across society and across the economy.
We were told at the time—the Government were challenged on this—that it was too hard: we could not possibly do any modelling with regard to the mortality of lockdown and restrictions, the morbidity of lockdown and restrictions, or the economic impact. That was sadly relegated to second order, but we should never forget that there is a huge interaction between wealth and health.
The interconnectedness of the impacts of the steps that were taken was totally ignored. They were unexplored and unexplained for a good 12 months. So only today, as my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight has articulated so clearly and eloquently, are we looking retrospectively at what happened. At last we are looking at the impact, not just on covid patients and those vulnerable to covid, but on those patients not subject to high risk for covid. We are looking at the impact on children’s life chances—not just on their education—as it is far more serious than just their education. We are beginning to look at the impact on society and communities and—at last—the economy. As my hon. Friend said, never again must we be faced with the question, “Did we unknowingly and unintentionally do more harm than good?”
Forecasting and modelling have a valuable place, but we must never forget that they are tools. Advisers advise; Ministers must ask for the right advice, the right variety of advice, and then decide. Never again should we hear, “We will just follow the science.”