Covid-19: Government Transparency and Accountability

Bob Seely Excerpts

Thursday 22nd April 2021 Commons Chamber

[Bob Seely (Isle of Wight) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Gedling (Tom Randall), who spoke very eloquently about the limits of knowledge and how much we know and do not know.

I thank the Committee for its report, and my hon. Friend the Member for Hazel Grove (Mr Wragg), who was as eloquent as ever, and the hon. Member for Bristol South (Karin Smyth) for their leadership on this. The Government have a duty to provide the public with fair and balanced information. As the report says, at times, the Government have presented data well in very difficult circumstances—the coronavirus.data.gov.uk site and the vaccination daily updates are excellent examples—but it is also clear that they have sometimes used statistics without providing full data, providing context for the data or explaining uncertainties in the data.

The critical thing—I am delighted that we have the Paymaster General listening to this debate, because, as she knows, I hold her in high regard—is to keep trust with the people. The Government need to provide the public with full information and datasets to allow them to understand risk in the round. The use of partial data or data that is presented partially damages public confidence. Frankly, it has damaged my confidence in the Government, which is why I have been less willing to vote for the past couple of lockdowns. I sometimes do not know what the Government’s real agenda is. I do not mean that in a silly conspiracy theory kind of way. The pandemic clearly exists. Clearly, there was a very strong case for a harder lockdown earlier, and I think a lot of us now see that case, but at the same time there has been a lack of clarity. I would draw a rough comparison with the Iraq war. Mistruths or non-untruths finally catch up with Governments. At the time, Tony Blair was a highly popular leader, but he is now seen to be a shallow populist. New Labour still has not recovered, partly because of the damage it did to its credibility by not telling the truth and not levelling with people.

I believe there is a strong case, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper), my hon. Friend the Member for Wycombe (Mr Baker) and others have argued, for fuller and franker datasets. Government can help people to rationalise risk, as my hon. Friend the Member for Gedling explained, so that we better understand Government policy. They need to explain better what is happening, rather than making a crude attempt at times to manipulate behaviour.

Specifically, it is difficult for us—all of us, whether we are in this House or out working in the country—to contextualise some of the numbers. Numbers of covid deaths were always released without a sense of proportion—without explaining that over 1,000 people die and are born in the country every day, or that between 7,000 and 25,000 people die of seasonal flu every year. In the last decade, that has included both myusb parents, for example. There has been so little contextualisation of the information. I saw not one Government spokesman, be it a Minister or a health adviser, say that the median age of covid death was 83. Why not? Because, as we know perfectly well, the Government feared a lack of compliance. For sure, that is a risk, but there is a greater risk by not being honest. There was a strong argument for saying why we should co-operate anyway; we did not need to have the information manipulated for us by a Government who, no doubt with the best of intentions, were trying to get us to do certain things. As my hon. Friend the Member for Gedling says, honesty is the best policy, even when we are unclear about the policy. I read some media stories—clearly, with a pinch of salt—suggesting that some Government scientists were happy to go along with this soft manipulation of data. If so, shame on them.

My next point—I promise I will not be too much longer, Madam Deputy Speaker—is that not once was there a realistic attempt to offset covid data with other data to show the cost of lockdown. That may not have changed our opinions, because clearly the saving of life was the significant factor here, but in saving life people have died and it is right for us to be able to understand and see the datasets that explain honestly the true costs. Frankly, we still have not got them a year in.

Sometimes, I do not know what the Government’s aims on covid are. We are told repeatedly by the experts and Ministers that we cannot get rid of covid. Well, okay—so, as my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock (Jackie Doyle-Price) says, if we cannot get rid of it, why are our restaurants not open? Frankly, so few people are dying of it that more people are now dying on the roads than of covid. More people will be dying from winter flu than from covid. So why are we still in a situation where we are encouraging long-term poverty, which will have a far greater effect on people’s lives than a pandemic that—thank God—is no longer killing people in anything other than tiny, tiny numbers? There is a lack of logic and consistency. If the Government had been clearer with the data, more honest and more open—if they had said, “Here’s the data. This is what we make of it”—we would have been able to do a better job.

I am happy to accept that the hard lockdown was probably the best option at the time. After that, we could have followed the Swedish model, lived with it and accepted that there were different prices to pay, or we could have continued to have a hard and aggressive lockdown every time covid raised its head. They were both variant options, and we sort of muddled through the middle in a slightly uncomfortable way. There was not great advice initially from Public Health England, but we understand that everybody in the beginning made mistakes, and I do not think that any Government would have done this any differently.

The pandemic created a unique set of circumstances, but I believe that more data and more context would have fundamentally created more trust, both here and, more importantly, out in the rest of the country. I know that my right hon. Friend the Member for Portsmouth North (Penny Mordaunt) is a diligent Minister and Member of this House. I urge her to advise the Government that more data and more context equals more trust, and we still need that for the future.

[Mr Mark Harper (Forest of Dean) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight (Bob Seely). That theme of trust is one that I will return to. I thank the members of the Committee who are present, who, ably led by their Chair, my hon. Friend the Member for Hazel Grove (Mr Wragg), produced an excellent report for the House. I certainly endorse all its conclusions and recommendations. It would be welcome if the Government accepted them all and put them all into practice.

One of the points that the Committee makes is that policy based on evidence and data is important, but that has obviously been very difficult in these challenging circumstances. We have learned over time, and Government have not had all the data to hand, particularly at the beginning. I recognise that in the remarks that I will go on to make.

Several hon. Members have talked about being open and transparent about communication and about keeping high levels of trust. That is incredibly important. My right hon. Friend the Member for Clwyd West (Mr Jones) referenced that back in October. He also referenced the press conference that the Prime Minister had on the Saturday. For me, one of the most important and damaging episodes was the day before, when information about projected hospital capacity was leaked to the media. It was not consistent with what I was being told by my local NHS trust. It turned out not to be true, and it also turned out to be so insubstantial that it was not used at the press conference the day afterwards in setting out the Government’s decision making. For me, hospital capacity and the pressure on the NHS would have been incredibly important in my decision making, and I am afraid that that episode significantly damaged the trust I had in Ministers, which informed the trust I was willing to put in them afterwards, which has informed the decisions I have taken.

[Bob Seely]

Was that the fiasco of the claimed 4,000 deaths, which was bogus data that was already out of date, or was that another example?

[Mr Harper]

No—my right hon. Friend the Member for Clwyd West referred to that. This was a slide that was leaked to Laura Kuenssberg, the BBC’s political editor, which referred to hospital capacity and how quickly we may find the NHS being overwhelmed. That information was not published by the Prime Minister the following day and turned out not to be correct. I felt that that was very damaging. It was intended to set up a debate, but the data actually did not stand up at all.

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[The Paymaster General (Penny Mordaunt)]

I shall certainly do my best to answer as many hon. Members’ questions as I can. I thank all right hon. and hon. Members for their contributions to the debate and for their interest in the critical issue of how data has helped to shape our response to the pandemic. I put on record my thanks to PACAC for its work, its report and its very helpful recommendations. The report makes it clear that the Government have

“overseen a remarkable effort pulling together data on Covid 19”,

with

“much of this data and analysis available to the public”.

It repeatedly refers to the Government’s openness with data, noting:

“The Government has responded to requests for new data and improved access to evidence.”

I also put on record my thanks to the civil servants, scientists and partner organisations that have done incredible work over the past 12 months—I think that the authors of the report and all Members of this House would agree with that. They have had to bring together very complex datasets from very different types of science and fuse them together in a way that enables us to be informed and enables Ministers to make decisions. That has been incredibly difficult and they have done it very well.

[Bob Seely]

I know that the Minister does her best to listen. Does she accept that a lot was presented without context? This was very complicated, but, looking back, I think it could have been done in a way that gave much greater context and greater openness to the debate.

[Penny Mordaunt]

Certainly. I shall acknowledge some of the things that hon. Members have raised; I do think we need to learn from the past 12 months and look at how in future we can do this better, although God forbid we are ever in this particular situation again. As a Minister—I know my colleagues feel the same—I am always looking to continually improve and build on what we know works.

I also put on record my thanks to the House of Commons. When I was preparing to come before the Committee, I looked at what the House had done with the data that the Government produce; it has done a fantastic job in trying to inform colleagues about what is going on through the hub on our intranet, so I thank the staff of the House.

The Chair of PACAC, my hon. Friend the Member for Hazel Grove (Mr Wragg), raised several points. I will not relive my evidence session with the Committee, but in defence of the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, whose attendance several colleagues raised, he has a huge in-tray to deal with—this week he has been overseas as part of his responsibilities with regard to passports. I am developing a complex because every time I come before a Committee or appear in the Chamber, people are always keen to tell me that they are very disappointed to see me. I know that the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster is very alive to the issues that have been raised; I think he is coming before the Committee soon and has had considerable correspondence with it.

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[Penny Mordaunt]

I am glad I took my right hon. Friend’s intervention. If the Government have a role in this, it is to create a situation where it becomes possible for the insurance sector to provide products.

[Bob Seely]

Will the Minister give way?

[Penny Mordaunt]

I am not going to take any more interventions; I am sorry.

I am very aware of the issue raised by my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith), and I am certainly helping with regard to weddings. I can reassure him that this issue is well understood, and I hope that I will be able to come forward and say a bit more about the wedding sector. I will feed back to my colleagues on the wider insurance point, which I know many colleagues have raised before.

I am going to end there, Madam Deputy Speaker. Forgive me, but I wanted to respond to all the points that I could. I thank colleagues for their interest in this area and the sensible recommendations that have been made. We have acted already on some of them, and we will be bringing forward a response to the full report.