Covid-19: Government Transparency and Accountability

Mark Harper Excerpts

Thursday 22nd April 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mr William Wragg (Hazel Grove) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the Eighth Report of the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee, Government transparency and accountability during Covid-19: The data underpinning decisions, HC 803.

I thank the Liaison Committee and the Backbench Business Committee for granting us time to debate this important report this afternoon. I thank the members and staff of the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee for their extensive service and their efforts to bring about the report. I note that many of them are in their places this afternoon.

Of course, a report about statistics will bring up various quotations from the past. I think particularly of Disraeli’s

“lies, damned lies, and statistics.”

To manipulate Orwellian language slightly, I think too of the idea that language is power. In this circumstance, I would say that data certainly is power.

The past year has seen the Government impose some of the greatest ever restrictions on the people of this country. For those restrictions to have moral and democratic legitimacy, the Government must be able to justify them. At its core, the report asks whether the Government have done that. The aim of the report is not to question the decisions themselves, but to ask whether the data was available for us to understand and to interrogate those decisions.

The report finds that while there has been great progress in collecting data—I emphasise that point most strongly—there have been a number of shortcomings in how the data has been shared, how transparent the decisions have been and how some Ministers have made themselves available—or, sadly, have not done so—to face parliamentary scrutiny.

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

I was slightly disturbed to note in one of the report’s conclusions that Ministers who appeared in front of the Committee in place of the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster were not properly briefed to answer its questions. The Committee noted his

“refusal to attend this Committee and account for decisions”

and drew the conclusion that it was

“contemptuous of Parliament.”

In my experience, that is not the usual course of action of the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster; he is normally very happy to appear in front of Parliament. I wonder whether the Chair is able to furnish the House with any correspondence the Committee has had with the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster to see whether that lack of accountability might be put right in future.

[Mr Wragg]

I refer my right hon. Friend to my correspondence with the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, which is published regularly on the PACAC website. I would hope that the response to a well-meant, generous invitation to such a senior Minister will promptly be put right and that we will be assured of his attendance at our Committee, so that we can do the job we are there to do, which is to scrutinise Ministers and the Government, and indeed to give those Ministers the opportunity to place things on the record—something I think they appreciate.

As we progress through these latter stages of the pandemic, data transparency becomes more crucial. The public must understand the justification for each decision on the road map. I want to dwell on the progress to date; I am a fair-minded person and I like to give as much praise as I do criticism, although sometimes that may not be too apparent. On this occasion, I will dwell momentarily at least on the progress that has been made. The Government have amassed enormous amounts of data from a standing start, making much of it available to the public, including the covid-19 dashboard and through surveys by the Office for National Statistics, including the infection survey. The report pays warm tribute to the work of public servants, indeed echoing the words of Sir David Norgrove who paid tribute

“to all involved in this work, at a time of anxiety for them and their families, with all the disruption caused”.

One of the key messages of the report is in relation to accountability. The Committee has reviewed the common themes across three of our recently published reports. All three of those have highlighted the fact that the governance arrangements have not always been clear. Emphasised in those reports was a lack of clarity over the role of the Cabinet Office, the various covid Committees, and, indeed, the quad in decision making. In addition, as has been highlighted by my right hon. Friend the Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper), we have had concerns over ministerial accountability.

I will, if I may, mention briefly how data have been communicated to the public. The Committee is very clear in its view that statistics should be used for the purpose of genuinely informing the public and that open and honest communication builds trust. Even when the Government have, on occasion, fallen short of their promises, that openness and willingness to share uncertainty certainly builds trust. We should avoid, as one of our esteemed witnesses said, the tendency towards number theatre, where big numbers are bandied around perhaps without very clear context, perhaps seeking to impress, rather than entirely to explain.

The UK Statistics Authority’s code of practice for official statistics promotes the production and dissemination of official statistics that inform decision making. The UKSA’s code of practice framework is based on three pillars: trustworthiness, quality and value. Trustworthiness is about having confidence in the people and organisations that produce statistics and data, and valuing the statistics that supports society’s need for information. We, as a Committee, have concerns that Ministers have not always lived up to the expectations of that code of practice. As a result of the evidence presented to the Committee, we have recommended that the ministerial code is strengthened so that it is clear that Ministers are required to abide by that code of practice in their presentation of data.

On the publication of that data, the Committee outlined clear recommendations. The progress around these recommendations has been varied to date, although I have been keen to emphasise areas of strong progress. We recommend that the Government should publish the data that underpin the restrictions that will remain in place for businesses at each step and do so as a matter of urgency. It is all very well having the data in the public domain, but we need to know what are the benchmarks. I have likened it in the past to someone taking an examination: they know what mark they got in that examination but they do not know quite what the grade thresholds are. Furthermore, in terms of internet publication, hyperlinks to this data should be included on those pages explaining those restrictions for maximum transparency.

--- Later in debate ---

[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.

[Steve Brine]

The Opposition faced criticism for not asking enough questions. Does my right hon. Friend think that the media asked the right questions or enough questions when incidents such as the one he just mentioned came to light?

[Mr Harper]

No, I do not think that they did entirely. This also highlights the danger of important decisions being announced at press conferences, not in the House. At that particular time, the House was not sitting, but frankly, given the impact of a decision of that magnitude, the House should have been recalled, and it should have been announced in the House to allow us to ask questions, not on our own account but on account of our constituents. I am pleased that subsequently, when proposals for a third lockdown were made in January, the Government learnt from that episode and recalled the House, so that the decision could be announced here, and we were able to ask Ministers questions, albeit with rather a limited amount of time available to do so.

I mentioned the point about trust because there have been stories in the media—the most recent one being yesterday in The Spectator by Isabel Hardman—about the decision that my hon. Friend the Member for Hazel Grove referenced on vaccine passports. There is some suggestion, which I am sure cannot be true, that the Government might attempt to win a vote in the House by linking the case for international vaccine passports, which I think command a large degree of consensus, to the one for domestic vaccine passports. The cases for those are very different and should be set out clearly.

I do not know how Members would vote, but I say gently to the Government that if that were to turn out to be true and they were to win a vote on that basis, it would fracture the trust that many Members have in the Government, and that fracture may not be repairable. That would be very dangerous on a public health matter, where it is so important for the Government to command the trust of the public, particularly when decisions have to be taken quickly with a limited amount of data. It would be helpful if the Minister could confirm that any decisions on international vaccine passports and domestic ones will be set out separately for the House to take. If she were able to say that today, it would get rid of what may turn out to be completely idle speculation by members of the media.

On the core point about data, the House will remember that I and 62 other Members wrote to the Prime Minister on 13 February setting out what we thought was a sensible road map. We said that once the top four groups vulnerable to covid had been vaccinated and their vaccinations were effective by 8 March, we should be able to start unlocking the country. I am pleased that the Government listened to that and kicked that process off on 8 March. We also said that once the top nine groups have been vaccinated and those vaccinations are effective, which they will be by the end of this month, we could relax all restrictions. I will conclude my remarks by setting out where the data sits at the moment and why, although I agreed with the Government when they said “data, not dates”, I share the disappointment of my hon. Friend the Member for Hazel Grove that we seem to be stuck on dates, not data.

We are now in a position where the number of people dying from covid has fallen to around 24 per day, which accounts for around 4% of deaths in England and Wales. That is down from a peak in January of 1,361 per day, which accounted for 45% of deaths—a dramatic reduction. The number of people in hospital has fallen to 2,000 from nearly 40,000. The important thing is that vaccination, which has gone extraordinarily well, with a fantastically high uptake, is breaking the link between cases, deaths and hospitalisations. Since schools have gone back, cases have continued to fall, but even if we were to see cases rising, that would not lead to an increase in deaths and hospitalisations.

I think that the Government could safely go faster. That would have massive economic benefits. As my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock (Jackie Doyle-Price) said, there has been a big impact on hospitality, and that is important because the job losses have been largely borne by younger people, who are largely not vulnerable to covid but have undergone tremendous sacrifices to their future prospects for the benefit of others. The sooner we can safely reopen the economy, the sooner we can improve the prospects for the younger generation, who have suffered so dramatically from the steps that have been necessary to deal with the impact of covid.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Harper]

On ministerial accountability, I accept that the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster is incredibly busy, but it is the central responsibility of Ministers, however busy they are, to be accountable to this House; that includes the Prime Minister, who spends hours in front of the Liaison Committee. Nothing is more important than Ministers’ accountability to the House and Members’ responsibility on behalf on the public. Since the Paymaster General mentions the Chancellor of Duchy of Lancaster’s trip to Israel, where no doubt he is discussing vaccine passports, could she answer my question about the Government’s proposal on the decision that it will put to this House, so that we can rule out any of the shenanigans that we have read about in the newspapers?

[Penny Mordaunt]

I am fairly confident that I can flatten any suggestion of shenanigans in that regard. These are not only very distinct issues, but conditional on very distinct things. What we do on international travel, over and above our own border controls, is clearly contingent on work with international partners. The World Health Organisation will be developing and thinking about schemes that it might put in place for a covid equivalent of the yellow fever card. Those are clearly very different from the domestic issues that my right hon. Friend refers to; I know that people would not want to conflate them and that it would be unhelpful to do so. I think that I can confidently say that.

Many Members touched on the complex balance between fighting the virus and trying to mitigate its impact on people’s livelihoods, mental and physical health, and freedoms. That is why this is obviously such a complex situation.

The hon. Member for Bristol South (Karin Smyth) raised many issues, but two in particular. On preparedness, she will know that I published the latest iteration of the national risk register on 18 December last year. External bodies welcomed that and said it was an improvement on its predecessors. On local information, she will remember from my evidence to the Committee that I was very robust in agreeing with her that people who have been in the frontline of this response are the local resilience forums, the local authorities, and our local health and care services. Giving them the data they need to make decisions is absolutely critical. As the crisis has gone on, we have got better and better about giving them information and sharing information, because this is obviously a two-way process.

It is also vital that members of the public can go on the public health website and look up in their area, right down to ward level, the number of positive cases, virus tests conducted, hospitalisations, death rates, and admission figures for both ordinary bed occupancy and mechanical ventilator bed occupancy. They can see all that data. That is not just good for transparency’s sake; it is a hugely motivating factor in getting people to follow the advice of the chief medical officer. Our actions are not just helping the nation; they are helping their neighbours and the nurses who are looking after people in their local hospital. They are helping their friends and neighbours.