No10’s virus failures blamed on ‘managerialist’ culture

WHITEHALL culture is to blame for the Government’s failures over coronavirus, according to a report.

The study by the Civitas think tank, published today, claims “The Blob” led Downing Street “down the wrong path” over its handling of the crisis.

Citing data that suggest Britain, along with Spain, had the highest death rate per capita in the world for the first half of 2020, the research accuses ministers of “hiding behind the science”, even though the experts made “many mistakes”.

In “A Hat Trick of Failures”, authors Jim Mcconalogue and Tim Knox blame the poor response on “the scientific clique entrenched within a managerialist Whitehall culture which the politicians chose not to confront or question”.

Claiming the Government’s reaction to Covid-19 has been “one of the most expensive of any country in the OECD”, the report accuses advisory groups including Sage, Nervtag, SPI-M and PHE of having a “monopoly” with advice that was “rarely challenged either by Government or by those outside the inner circle of advisers”.

The report claims that at times “advisers decided and ministers advised”.

It adds: “There are many branches of science which were effectively ignored by government advisers, and that other more successful countries such as Germany used a far wider range of expertise in response to the pandemic.

“Why did other European countries – including Germany, Sweden and the Netherlands – fare so much better in terms of their rates of excess deaths, the economic impact of the measures taken in response to the pandemic and their readiness to ease lockdown?”

Mr Mcconalogue, Civitas editorial director, and Mr Knox, former director of the Centre for Policy Studies, also claim the science “made many mistakes”, including sending elderly infected patients from NHS hospitals to care homes.

They recommend that any future inquiry should question why the Government did not draw on a wider pool of experience than that offered by Sage and the other advisory bodies – and cast doubt over the effectiveness of Cobra, the Government’s emergency committee, both authorising Sage and “unquestionably relying” on its advice.

They also suggest that appointments to future scientific advisory bodies conform to the guidance set out by the Office for Commissioner for Public Appointments. The report cites data from the Blavatnik School of Government at Oxford University that suggest only Algeria, Nicaragua and Iran were less prepared to ease lockdown restrictions than Britain.