FROM THE EDITOR

You are not very good at judging risk. Sorry, but it’s true. All humans have a tendency (studied by psychologists over many years) to assess risk based on an array of cognitive quirks rather than the available evidence. We feel safer driving than flying, for example, despite what the stats show.

Among these quirks is optimism bias, where we think our personal risk is less, relative to other people’s.

Our tendency to downplay risk can be a positive force when it drives us to keep working on difficult tasks. Even when we have a well-judged risk assessment there can be many reasons to chose a high-risk, high-reward path. In their book Vaxxers, Catherine Green and Sarah Gilbert explain how their teams designed and developed Covid-19 vaccines at an unprecedented speed by choosing to proceed “at risk” on many occasions. They began some processes before funding was secured, judging that the risk of slow development was greater than the risk of having to stop a particular piece of work if funding did not emerge.

Similar thought processes were going on across government – emails published this month by the Good Law Project show then-health secretary Matt Hancock telling officials to go “hell for leather” when awarding testing contracts, despite concerns about overriding the usual procurement processes.

Alongside optimism, humans tend to share another bias – hindsight bias – which makes us think things were more inevitable than they really were.

Because of this, people are likely to think differently about the risks taken by Gilbert and Green (weren’t they bound to succeed?) than the risks taken by ministers and officials when working on policies that did not meet the desired outcome (didn’t they realise it was bound to fail?).

There are, of course, many issues to consider when assessing decisions taken around procurement in the early days of Covid, including questions of VIP lanes, cronyism and the impact of austerity on pandemic plans. That’s why a full inquiry is being held – to tease out these issues and unearth lessons that will help future governments in moments of crisis.

The job of the inquiry is made harder by hindsight bias, which makes us judge past decisions on our current knowledge, even if we think we are simply remembering what “everyone knew” at the time. In late 2021, Professor Christopher Meyer of King’s College London set out some strategies to help unpick this bias and allow meaningful lessons to be learned, including ensuring the inquiry panel had a mix of experts; clear timelines about what was known and when; and which experts were most likely to have been listened to.

Meyer also notes that public inquiries “should not wait until memories are beginning to fade, and public narratives about the meaning of a crisis have consolidated.”

The Covid inquiry is yet to begin in earnest. If this delay means a strong panel and robust terms of reference, that is positive. But in the meantime, details about the early days of the pandemic are already emerging through court cases and news stories and they don’t inspire confidence. As our analyses from two health policy experts show (p.8 and p.13), Matt Hancock seems to be trying to shape a narrative around bad advice and hamstrung ministers, rather than seeking to support a process which might help his successors at the despatch box deal more effectively with crises they will inevitably face.

home,” Simon Beatty said.

“It’s nice to know that you have stood up for us against the naysayers who think we all do as little as possible like they do to get their salary.”

“Great to see our perm secs defending this. Frankly, I’m way more productive when working at home,” Jon Woodcock said. “And yes, as it’s Deaf Awareness Week, Teams/Zoom makes my life a whole lot better too. Work is what we do, not where we go.”

Sammantha Worboys agreed: “Yes! This is so good to see and hear. It’s about time someone stepped up for all those colleagues who have been working so hard during the pandemic. When a lot of people were furloughed or businesses closed the civil and public servants were still working juggling Covid, caring responsibilities and more. Where we work doesn’t matter, we still work and we work hard.”

The department’s head of productivity and efficiency, Sophie Reece-Gadhvi, also weighed in. “The Home Office is fortunate to have a senior leader with Abi’s integrity, talent and commitment and her willingness to work flexibly from multiple offices across the country (and from home when appropriate) is an asset as the senior civil service plays catchup outside of London,” she said. “Thank you Matthew for backing Abi, on behalf of many of us who admire and respect her.” about a new 80:20 office-home working mandate, using an all-staff call to voice their concerns. Readers reflected on CSW’s exclusive.

“This is at the heart of it – ‘not defending them from unfounded attacks from media and ministers;. Whatever the truth of it, staff morale is about perception and DfE have a task now,” Charlie Barnes said.

Lorna Pirozzolo commented: “Having so many disabled friends who were refused jobs because ‘they couldn’t be done remotely’ suddenly find those jobs were easily done remotely during the pandemic, I struggle to accept that we are going to go backwards and needlessly alienate disabled people from the workforce yet again.”

But not everyone agreed. Rhys Lewis said: “I personally am really pleased that we’re getting back to some modicum of pre-pandemic working patterns. Teams that hang together, stay together. And being together in the office is critical to achieving this and the govt’s wider ambitions for education reform!” of brand recognition there. Doesn’t help that levelling up is a bit of an embarrassing title to have in your official name,” Tahmid Choudhury said.