Scientific advice and evidence in emergencies

UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE    To be published as HC 498-v

House of COMMONS

Oral EVIDENCE

TAKEN BEFORE the

 Science and Technology Committee

Scientific advice and evidence in emergencies  

Wednesday 1 December 2010

Professor Sir John Beddington

Lord Adonis and Rt Hon Andy Burnham MP

Rt Hon Baroness Neville-Jones and Rt Hon MR David Willetts MP

Evidence heard in  Public Questions  324 - 412

USE OF THE TRANSCRIPT

Oral Evidence

Taken before the  Science and Technology Committee

on  Wednesday 1 December 2010

Members present:

Andrew Miller (Chair)

Stephen Metcalfe

Stephen Mosley

Pamela Nash

Graham Stringer

Roger Williams

________________

 Examination of Witness

Witness: Professor Sir John Beddington, Government Chief Scientific Adviser, gave evidence.

Q324 Chair: Good morning, Professor Beddington. As you know, we are continuing to gather evidence on our inquiry covering scientific advice and evidence in emergencies and we have spoken several times about this issue. How closely does the Government Office for Science work with the Civil Contingencies Secretariat in preparing for and responding to emergencies?

Professor Sir John Beddington: Good morning, everybody. The answer is that it has varied a little bit but, if we look at the current situation, it is fair to say that we are linking in rather more closely than we did, shall we say, two years ago when I first started.

In terms of the particular emergencies that I have been involved in via SAGE, in the case of the swine flu outbreak, we linked in with the Cabinet Office and the Civil Contingencies Secretariat in a regular way. They were organising the SAGE together with the Department of Health. In the case of the volcanic ash outbreak, it was very closely from day one.

Currently, one of the things that we are engaged in with the Civil Contingencies Secretariat is looking into the future. Space weather is one of the things you are looking at and we have been having discussions with them. We have also been having discussions with them about some of the more generic issues-for example, reasonable worst case scenarios and so on. It is fair to say that we are linking in rather closely and more closely than we were two years ago.

Q325 Chair: Do you assess the quality of the Cabinet Office’s horizon scanning function?

Professor Sir John Beddington: We are getting involved in that; in terms of assessing the quality of it, no. It is fair to say that we-that is, including John Beddington-certainly did not think that the volcanic ash was a particular problem until it happened. I think 20:20 hindsight and looking at the frequency of volcanic activity in Iceland would indicate that we should have looked at that and thought of it as a potential problem. That we didn’t, as I say, is 20:20 hindsight. But what we are engaged in now is doing some serious horizon scanning. I have just gone out to a Blackett group-and I will explain in a moment what the Blackett group is-to ask them about horizon scanning and what are the black swan events, the high impact, low probability events and, in a sense, looking forward into it. In terms of saying was there anything missing from previous Cabinet Office assessments, clearly, we should have thought about volcanic ash. I think that space weather is an issue that is going to be coming up. I think cyber security is an issue that is going to be coming up. In a sense, there is some degree of prescience shown by this Committee in looking into the future also.

The Blackett group, very briefly, is a set of groups that I bring together to look at particular aspects of scientific advice, bringing in and tapping in the academic and industry communities on a variety of areas. This particular group is dealing with the black swan events. I have gone to that group and said, "Look, can you think in your own different areas where we should be looking or may be missing potential emergencies from our current Risk Register?"

Q326 Chair: Again, perhaps using the power of hindsight, would it be better if the Government Office for Science was located in the Cabinet Office?

Professor Sir John Beddington: It is a question I have been asked many times, including when I was interviewed for the job. My answer to that is that there are advantages and disadvantages. In particular, the major advantage is the close proximity of the Government Office for Science with both the Science Minister and also Adrian Smith’s team, who, until yesterday, were working essentially on the Research Councils, the research base, but from now on are working on both the higher education area and innovation. We are co-located. My office is about 50 metres from Adrian Smith’s, and I think that is a very substantial advantage of getting joined-up Government.

In terms of access to the Cabinet Office, my reporting line is to Sir Gus O’Donnell and we do link in on a very regular basis with his office, the Civil Contingencies Secretariat and so on. On balance, I would say the location, in proximity with Adrian and his team and David Willetts, probably outweighs the advantages of contiguity with the Cabinet Office.

Q327 Stephen Metcalfe: If we could just go back to the identification, comparison and assessment of risk for a minute, could you talk us through the process of exactly how and when you contribute to that process of identifying and assessing those risks? I know you have touched on it but could you just expand on that a bit?

Professor Sir John Beddington: I would say recently, and only relatively recently, have we been engaged in assessing the risk; we have reviewed it. We have a number of groups. In the counter-terrorism area, I have a group of Chief Scientific Advisers who meet with others from the agencies on that, so we have been looking in that field. In terms of the basic civil contingencies risks outside the CT area, not a lot has been done in the first couple of years. The first emergency I was involved in was the swine flu. The second one was the volcanic ash. I think now we are working rather more closely than we had hitherto. The issues that came up, for example, from the volcanic ash were that the Cabinet Office asked us to look forward. We’ve had the one volcanic explosion. They asked us to assess what are the likely possibilities of volcanic eruptions in Iceland of varying degrees of severity and try to assess the risk form in that way. That was an activity that SAGE took on and provided advice to the Cabinet Office at that stage.

Q328 Chair: When did that occur?

Professor Sir John Beddington: It was probably in the last one or two meetings of the SAGE group on volcanic ash.

Q329 Stephen Metcalfe: Maybe I didn’t quite understand your answer, but, so that I am clear, are you saying that you hadn’t, until the volcanic ash incident, been involved in setting up the national risk assessments?

Profes sor Sir John Beddington: No, not directly.

Q330 Stephen Metcalfe: You weren’t having an input into that at all?

Professor Sir John Beddington: I had not had it initially, no.

Q331 Stephen Metcalfe: Who would now make the final decision? You now having become involved and made recommendations, who is going to make the final decision about what makes it on to the national risk assessment?

Professor Sir John Beddington: I really don’t know, I’m afraid, Mr Metcalfe. The discussions are at the Secretariat level. If there was any debate about that issue, quite how that would be resolved I couldn’t say at the moment. Perhaps Baroness Neville-Jones might be able to enlighten you on that. It may be that the National Security Council would make the final decision, and I input into that through the Senior Officials Group.

Q332 Stephen Metcalfe: Does it surprise you that you don’t know? Considering that now you are having an input, it does seem quite important. This whole investigation is based on how the Government uses scientific evidence and advice.

Professor Sir John Beddington: Yes. I suppose what I am thinking, Mr Metcalfe, is that by and large you would expect a consensus to go forward, so it would be a decision by them with a consensus coming in from the scientific advice. In the event of some disagreement about what might constitute a risk, I would obviously have to get involved, although I have not encountered such an event. But my working assumption has been that, by and large, we would discuss this, there would be a reasonable consensus agreed and that would go forward. In a sense, the decision of what went on to the National Risk Register might be a relatively bureaucratic activity rather than a debate.

Q333 Stephen Metcalfe: Are you confident and happy with the system that the Government is now operating?

Professor Sir John Beddington: The thing is that the Cabinet Office own the National Risk Register and the national risk assessment. It is their responsibility, so I should imagine that Sir Gus O’Donnell would be the person who ultimately might have the final say, but obviously Ministers would need to endorse that.

Q334 Stephen Metcalfe: You have, I think, covered this matter. You said you have set up a horizon scanning group.

Professor Sir John Beddington: Yes.

Q335 Stephen Metcalfe: How do we deal with the "unknown unknowns", because that is, it appears to me, where the volcanic ash incident came from?

Professor Sir John Beddington: Yes.

Q336 Stephen Metcalfe: It wasn’t even on the risk assessment. Are you confident that there is a system now in place that is going to identify the unknown unknowns but, I suppose, by their very nature, there are always going to be some that we just ain’t thought of?

Professor Sir John Beddington: I won’t debate the semantics with you of how could you ever detect unknown unknowns, but in terms of trying to widen the discussion-and I think what we did was important-if we had thought about volcanoes in Iceland we should have picked it up. I did an analysis, again post hoc, saying that, looking back over the last 100 years or so, there has been an eruption about every four years. I believe there were some studies that the British Geological Survey had put together towards the tail end of March of this year which indicated that there was some potential there, but that was, again, fairly late in the day and it was of the order of two weeks later that we had the particular ash.

In terms of looking forward into the future, clearly what we are trying to do is widen the group of people who are having to think about that. By widening it to include a number of people from industry and from academe and posing that question to them, I hope we will actually be able to cover it. I think space weather and cyber security are two things that hitherto had not been on the national risk assessment or the register. There will clearly be work in progress to get both of them on.

Where are we now? Are we going to come up with an unknown unknown which has suddenly become a known unknown? We will have to see, but the bit of this process that I am involved in will be a fairly wide consultation amongst both academe and industry.

Q337 Stephen Metcalfe: Do you think the matrix that we use to assess risk-the impact versus likelihood axes-is a useful tool? Do you think that helps or is that a distraction because it means we are not looking necessarily at the most useful bits?

Professor Sir John Beddington: I think it is a useful tool, but there are some issues with it. In the Blackett group that has been debating the black swan issues, one of the areas that we can say is that you have a point on that matrix. These are logarithmic scales so they are fairly robust to having a point, but, if you think about a number of events, the ones with less impact are likely to be more frequent. If you think about it, the reality is probably that you have something shaped a bit like a banana for any individual event-a banana sloping downwards in that direction. But I think the point and the way in which it is used in the national risk assessment seems to me to be reasonably well covered in that. This is work in progress and when the Blackett group reports we may be making some suggestions about changes. I think it is a useful tool. It is a way of prioritising and indicating what are the high impact, high likelihood events, which are the ones that are obviously of major concern. It has largely identified those, although in the case of the volcanoes we didn’t.

Q338 Stephen Metcalfe: Do you think the Government understands how that works and its limitations?

Professor Sir John Beddington: In the conversations I have had with Ministers, yes, I think they do.

Q339 Graham Stringer: Is the reasonable worst case scenario evidence based, or is it a balancing point between necessary budget constraints and the precautionary principle where you load everything in? Can you objectively show how you come to the worst case scenario?

Professor Sir John Beddington: To the extent it is partially evidence based, it is quite difficult to come in any particular scenario to what is a reasonable worst case because in fact the very word "reasonable" implies there is something that is going beyond what would be pure analytic judgment. Following the swine flu outbreak and the inquiry by Dame Deidre Hine, I have been charged with developing ideas on how we could calculate the reasonable worst case scenarios in a variety of situations. The Blackett group that I have referred to is working on that at the moment and I have a couple of people who have made comments on what was the reasonable worst case scenario in the case of swine flu, but that is very much work in progress. In terms of simple things, suppose you had all the information. What you don’t want to have as a reasonable worst case is something that is so unlikely that it is one chance in 100 million or something of that order. Clearly, one of the wrong ways of calculating in a reasonable worst case scenario is, therefore, to assign each individual parameter to one of its extremes-let’s say one chance in 100 or something-and then say, "Let’s take all the extremes of those parameters and that comes up with a reasonable worst case." That is not a reasonable worst case. That is a very low probability event. To an extent, we are often in a situation where there is insufficient evidence to quantify all aspects in terms of those probabilities. Therefore, it will ultimately rely on some degree of judgment. But, as I have said, I have been asked to look at it in the case of swine flu and I am sure we will generalise from that.

In the case of the volcanic ash eruption, we were asked to look at what might be a reasonable worst case and, historically, we looked at one of the larger volcanoes in Iceland erupting with associated ejection of not just volcanic ash but also sulphur dioxide and things of that sort.

Q340 Graham Stringer: Is it constantly under re-assessment? I gather from your answers, both to Stephen and myself, that these scenarios are being regularly looked at. Is that the right conclusion we can draw?

Professor Sir John Beddington: It is important to assess them as more information comes in. Let’s take the case of something that we are working on at the moment, which is space weather. What would be a reasonable worst case for a space weather event? The worst event that we have any documentation for is the so-called Carrington event occurring towards the end of the 19th century. Whether that is a reasonable worst case is under active debate at the moment because there seemed to be a coincidence of a couple of low probability events in that Carrington event. Clearly, we need to be examining it. As the evidence of space improves, we should be in a position to better quantify the probabilities. In some cases, and in many of the natural phenomena, you are looking back at the historical record which is necessarily incomplete.

Q341 Graham Stringer: Can I just ask you a couple of questions particularly about how the swine flu epidemic was responded to? We corresponded about that.

Professor Sir John Beddington: Yes.

Q342 Graham Stringer: I was getting advice, which I passed on to you, that to increase the herd immunity it would be better to start with children rather than the most vulnerable.

Professor Sir John Beddington: I am sorry. Could you repeat that?

Q343 Graham Stringer: I was getting some local professional advice that it would be better to start vaccinating children to increase the herd immunity rather than starting with the most vulnerable. You wrote back and said that was not the conclusion you were coming to. When we had Neil Ferguson before us, he said two quite different things. One was that if there had been vaccine available he believed it might be the case that you would start with children to increase the herd immunity, but, secondly, when children were eventually vaccinated, he thought it was too late and that it was a waste-not his words-to have done that then. Do you think you could explain the thinking and tell us whether, if we have an epidemic again, the thinking will be different?

Professor Sir John Beddington: Yes. I think I understand. I have not seen the detail of the evidence you refer to but I think I understand what the issue is. In the case of conferring herd immunity, you want to get as many individuals who are immune to a particular infectious disease as quickly as possible. In terms of contact rates, children have very, very high contact rates, so vaccinating children, where a vaccine is available and you are trying to confer herd immunity, makes a lot of sense.

In the case of the actual swine flu outbreak we had, first of all, there was a fairly substantial delay before the vaccine became available because of manufacturing issues and so on. But, also, as we were moving towards the end of the swine flu and were beginning to understand it in a rather better way, we realised that the ratio of people who were showing symptoms to the people who, essentially, had the virus but did not display symptoms, was quite substantial. Therefore, vaccinating children at that stage was not necessarily the appropriate thing to do. I think that is what Neil Ferguson’s reasoning was.

Q344 Graham Stringer: The final part of my question is, would you advise a different approach if there was a likelihood of a new swine flu epidemic?

Professor Sir John Beddington: The concern we have is that pandemic influenza is, first of all, highly likely and it is high impact. So, in a sense, in terms of the previous discussion with Mr Metcalfe, it is important to recognise that a new strain of influenza is likely. I still think that the big concern is not a swine flu but a bird flu-H5N1. It exists. There is transmission from animals to humans and a very high mortality rate associated with that. That, I would say, would be a reasonable worst case, that bird flu might move and start transmitting from human to human. In such a situation it would have to depend on the availability of the vaccine, the level of mortality rates and so on. I don’t think there is any generality that I would seek to make.

One of the issues, however, and there is some generality here, is that substantial use of antivirals also has the ability to provide temporary immunity within the pandemic, so both the use of the vaccine and also antivirals might be an appropriate thing. However, without the details of the actual dynamics of the pandemic, it would be very hard to give you a general answer, Mr Stringer.

Q345 Pamela Nash: Do you feel that the scientific capability in the Civil Service at the moment is sufficient or enough to cope with emergencies like those we have been discussing in this session?

Professor Sir John Beddington: It would depend on the emergency, obviously. The way it works at the moment in terms of providing science advice-and I guess you have heard this several times before so I will be relatively brief-is that, depending on the emergency type, there will be a lead department or-if there is no lead department or if, in fact, the effects are going across a number of departments-I would be asked to chair a SAGE. I have chosen, on the two occasions that this has happened, one, to chair it with somebody who was a medical expert, in the case of Sir Gordon Duff on the swine flu, and the second I chaired just myself. We then pulled together from the academic and industry community a set of experts who were prepared to sit on the SAGE and help. Some of them will be Government scientists, others will be from the research council community and others will be independent either in industry or academe.

We are fortunate in the sense that we have a very substantial and skilled research base. We have a lot of very good scientists and engineers, including social scientists, out there in the community. I won’t say it is a plethora of riches but there is a very substantial resource to call upon. I wouldn’t guarantee that this would not be a problem. It would depend on the type of instance. If you had a multiplicity of incidents where, let’s say, a chemical or a radiological phenomenon was occurring in 15 places around the UK, there would be almost certainly a strain on the resources to assess what was happening. But I don’t feel a considerable problem at the moment in terms of that capacity. It would not be the first worry I would have.

Q346 Pamela Nash: You mentioned that you have chaired SAGEs before when there has not been a clear lead department. On the volcanic ash incident we know that a secretariat was not provided to the Department for Transport. Is that right and should the Government Office for Science have done so?

Professor Sir John Beddington: What happened with the volcanic ash was that it was clear it was becoming a problem. I was in contact with the Cabinet Office Civil Contingencies and it became pretty clear that one of the key issues was going to be scientific. That was all happening the weekend after the first event. So I pulled together a team of scientists and engineers to work and started the SAGE. We expanded that slightly. There is a Chief Scientific Adviser in the Department for Transport, Brian Collins, who was intimately involved from day one in these assessments. In terms of the way in which the Secretariat was underpinned, that was done by the Cabinet Office and my own office. It was happening within a very short time, so one had to do that.

In terms of funding, there is an issue that, in due course, needs examining because we are using the scientific community and the research community, and the research councils provided some of their infrastructure. For example, the Dornier aeroplane was used to assess what was going on in the ash. That probably needs to be thought through in some cases. In the case of the pandemic influenza with swine flu, clearly the lead department was the Department of Health. They provided the secretariat and appropriate research funding to develop projects on a fast timescale. We need to be pondering that. This is not an issue that is clear cut. In the case of the volcanic ash, we were lucky that we had very able people who were prepared to commit their time. If it had gone on for longer, we would have had to think very, very seriously about how we could provide funding to deal with that.

Q347 Chair: Can I just push you a little further?

Professor Sir John Beddington: Please.

Q348 Chair: All the SAGE people you referred to are independent people who have been brought in with the relevant expertise from outside. Would it not help the core activity of planning for emergencies if you had a stronger base of people with scientific experience at the heart of the Civil Service?

Professor Sir John Bedding ton: I think you know my views on that, Chairman.

Q349 Chair: Let’s have them on the record.

Professor Sir John Beddington: I think it is enormously important to have core scientists and engineers, including social scientists, in Government. As you know, I have managed to persuade Government to appoint chief scientific advisers in each of the main science-using departments and also in some of the ones which don’t use science a great deal. So that’s almost complete. As you are well aware, the only major Department of State that does not have one is the Treasury.

Also, in terms of the way in which we have been working with the science and engineering community in Government, we have set up the Government Science and Engineering Community with 3,000 plus members. We meet with them regularly. The aim here is to raise the profile and the utility of people who have this appropriate training within Government.

There is a second question which is of interest, and I would again describe that as "work in progress". As we look through future potential, looking at the Risk Register, for example, and we say, "What are the potential emergencies?", there is a lot of merit in thinking in advance of having a Yellow Pages for the group of scientists who would be the sort of people that you would want to bring in to an emergency. For example, if we had a space weather emergency, at the moment, we could compile a list of people whom we would want to be involved as we dealt with that. That is something I need to be thinking more about. In the case of swine flu, it is fairly clear and I think we’ve got a good group of people. In the case of volcanic ash we did. But it would probably be arguably more efficient if we had a group of people who were aware that we might expect them to be involved if this particular emergency came about. That is work in progress, I am in discussion with the Cabinet Office about it and we may start to have that for particular risks.

Q350 Pamela Nash: One of the criticisms that we have been given in the written evidence that has been submitted to the Committee is that often scientific advice that is given to Government is filtered through civil servants who may not have any scientific expertise before it gets there. Is that an assessment you would agree with?

Professor Sir John Beddington: I wouldn’t say it’s my experience. First of all, having a chief scientific adviser in every Department should mean that they are related. They can interact with their policy people and provide fairly coherent advice. My job, ultimately, if there is some sort of confusion, is to say, "Look, you are misunderstanding the science advice." Obviously, in taking particular policy decisions, science is only one of the factors that Ministers and senior civil servants would take into account, with legal, economic and ethical factors, arguably. Those are other considerations. It isn’t always that the science advice would be the pre-eminent piece of information and evidence that would be required. The discussions that led to the Principles of Scientific Advice to Government underpin that fairly well. The fact that that is now established in the Ministerial Code provides some degree of certainty that scientific advice would be going through to the heart of any particular policy.

Pamela Nash: That’s good news.

Q351 Stephen Mosley: Can we just move on to the operation of the SAGE, in particular its transparency? Are there any protocols, codes of practice or principles that guide the transparency of the SAGE, and do you, in your own opinion, believe that SAGEs tend to operate under a presumption of secrecy rather than disclosure?

Professor Sir John Beddington: This is something we need to be thinking about. The first thing is whether people are happy to be identified as providing advice on SAGE. That will depend on individual decisions. Should we be doing that? We need to re-examine it. On the way we have dealt with it historically, it is very important that we don’t in any sense muzzle people who agree to be on SAGE. One of the things we have said is that, if people wish to talk to the media or give out information on the basis of their scientific expertise, they are welcome to do that. They are welcome to tell people they are sitting on SAGE, as part of it, but they shouldn’t in any sense indicate either that their views are the views of SAGE or that they are using information that has been obtained via the SAGE process. In terms of the actual operation of an emergency, there are going to be confidentiality issues which are quite important. Effectively, SAGE is reporting to the COBRA Committee. This is making policy, I suppose, on the hoof, which is why it is operating in that way. So some degree of confidentiality is absolutely essential at that stage in the operational time.

Subsequently, after this has gone through, we should be examining quite what could be made out. Are the minutes available? Are the scientific papers available? Should we be thinking about minutes which would identify individuals? Should we be thinking about minutes that are rather bland and, for example, rather than saying, "Dr X made the point", we just say, "The point was made." Those are things that we are actively thinking about.

There have been two exemplars of SAGE to date. My working bet is that they always come in April, so what’s happening in April 2011 I don’t know. But we need to be addressing these issues. The basic principle is that, wherever possible, this scientific advice should be out there for assessment by the wider community. Dame Deidre Hine, in her recommendations, indicated she thought it would be important that, for example, during an emergency, I brief the wider scientific community on particular actions. That is an interesting suggestion which I am very happy to examine. If we had an emergency tomorrow, would I do that? I’m not sure. It would depend on the emergency. But the idea and the basic philosophy is that we should be as transparent as we possibly could to ensure that the wider scientific and engineering community can comment and that we should certainly, post hoc, try to get as much information out as is felt to be appropriate within the obvious constraints of confidentiality.

Q352 Stephen Mosley: It is fair to say that, as a Committee, we found that the SAGE for the swine flu was more transparent than the information that came out from the ash cloud. We asked Professor Collins about that. We asked him why the membership hadn’t been published and why the minutes hadn’t been published. He said, "You’re going to have to ask Sir John." So, Sir John, now you are here.

Professor Sir John Beddington: Okay. It’s known as a hospital pass, isn’t it, in the rugby world? Thank you, Brian Collins. It happened very quickly. I don’t see any reason why the members should not be identified and we can examine that with the Cabinet Office. I am aware of no reason why we couldn’t publish the list of members. I think it is just that we haven’t. I don’t think there is anything remotely sinister in that. It is just that the SAGE operations were much quicker, because the volcanic ash was there, and then it was gone. It was all working with limited resources. There is no reason that I can see whatsoever for not publishing the names of the individuals on it.

Q353 Chair: Would that be a universal rule or can you envisage circumstances where that wouldn’t apply? For example, if we were dealing with a space weather event, one could envisage the need to call in expertise from the Ministry of Defence that perhaps you would not otherwise.

Professor Sir John Beddington : Yes, a nd the agencies as well. You could n’t generalise from a SAGE. For example, I was not C hief S cientist then, but , when the Litvinenko affair was operating and there was emerg ency scientific advice going in, it was unlikely that one would seek to identify all members of the science advisory team that was providing advice there.

I think i t would be a general view that, if possible, we should, but obviously the particular circumstances might mean that there wo uld be some individuals it would not be appropriate to name. For example, we have amongst the chief scientific advisers’ cadre a chief scientific adviser to the security services . Such a person might very well sit on a cyber security issue but, for obvious reasons, one would not seek to identify them.

Q354 Stephen Mosley: Fair enough. I know that the Government has said that it is the intention to publish a volcanic ash SAGE by the end of the year. Is that still going to be the case?

Professor Sir John Beddington : As far as I am aware, yes. Certainly that would be my aim.

Q355 Graham Stringer: How do you guard against conventional thinking within a SAGE or, for that matter, how do you guard against vested interests?

Professor Sir John Beddingt on : Vested interests is an easier question to answer than the first one, so I will answer that first, Mr Stringer. I think with vested interests people are expected to indicate any conflict of interest, any activity. For example, in the operation of the swine flu SAGE , one or two members indicated a declared interest in a particular discussion. They said they felt it was inappropriate for them to comment because of potential conflicts of interest.

How do we guard against conventional thinking? You can’t guarantee that, but what we can try to do is to challenge it as much as we can. The Blackett r eviews that I have been setting up are a way of going beyond what might be termed more conventional thinking and bringing in completely different people . The aim of the Blackett r eviews is to have people who have hitherto not been involved in these particular areas , but often in an area which invol ves some degree of secrecy, and b riefing them on the public domain because t he science and the engineering questions are not highly secret or highly confidential . But t he application of them and the individual ways that they might work through Government would be subject to some degree of confidentiality. So , in that way , we are trying to generate, I suppose, fresh thinking.

You can’t guarantee that you won’t always have the conven tional answer, but the way we saw, for example, i n the volcanic ash, two complete ly different communities starting to work together in the SAGE was very interesting. You had the community of the volcanologists and you had the community of the people who did meteorological modelling. They very quickly gelled together. They were raising questions of each other. I thought it worked very well. In a similar way, the third group that was involved in the volcanic ash SAGE were those dealing with engineering issues, such as what the effect of ash might be on an engine. There was a challenge coming over from the geologi sts and the Met Office people to that community of engineers. So I think a multiplicity is one way of t rying to guard against it. C learly, you can’t always ensure that it happens but that is what I am attempting to do.

Q356 Graham Stringer: Sho u ld members of SAGE be financially compensated?

Professor Sir John Beddington : I all uded to that a little while ago, and I think it depends a little bit how long it goes on. Many of the people who joined the volcanic ash SAGE were making a personal sacrifice. Some of them were consultants, others worked for u niversities and others worked for research councils . That question needs to be examined. I don’t know the answer and I think it will depend on the circumstance. For example, the SAGE for swine flu lasted for a v ery substantial period of time- a matter of many months. In that situation, if we are looking for an independent person to do it, some degree of compensation is going to have to be appropriate. Where it lasts for two or three weeks, it is less of a problem. But t hat is the thing we have got to examine. I can’t imagine making a career on being a member of SAGE s, but we do need to think about that.

Q357 Graham Stringer: Can we go back to the volcani c ash and the operation of SAGE? Didn’t SAGE really just act as a rubber stamp to what the CAA were doing because they didn’ t meet until the aeroplanes were flying again, did they?

Professor Sir John Beddington : There were a number of problems which SAGE need ed to look at . The first one was to understand how well the model that was used by the Met Office in their advice on volcanic ash was working, what the structure of it was, was it reasonably accurate and was it fundamentally misconceived? That was the first question that, in a sense, SAGE had to look at. We then had to think about characterising the sort of ash there was . U ltimately, it would need to be used to assess what the result might be on engines.

W e invited the CAA to attend SAGE . S o somebody from the C AA attended and we worked fairly closely with the CAA in our discussions. We were not taking it as a rubber stamp. The CAA has the responsibility for regulation. At first , it essentially said that the presence of any ash whatsoever would mean that no flying was allowed. That was, as it were, the start of the emergency. The Met Office’s model was able to indicate the presence or absence of ash. That produced contour lines on maps which would close down airspace.

The second move was in a discussion between the Department for Transport, the CAA and the engine ma nufacturers indicating that the first approach could be relaxed. Again, issues kept coming up about whether the name model that was used by the Met Office would enable that degree of additional detail. That was, again, a discussion which was beyond the CAA’s competence. In a sense, they were getting information from the Met Office and it was part of SAGE’s job to say, "Is this information reasonably robust to the levels of accuracy that they wanted?"

Q358 Graham Stringer: I will finish with two questions in one, if I may. I don’t think you have dealt with the time liness or lack of time liness of putting together SAGE , because the CAA had allowed flying by the time SAGE first met. Does that indicate that SAGE wasn’t put together as quickly as it should have been to deal with those issues? The second question I would add is this. When we had British Airways here with the CAA, there was an absolute conflict in terms of their attitude as to what should have happened. Basically, BA thought they should have flown when they thought they could fly, because that is what they did in the rest of the world. The CAA used the forecasts from the meteorologists. Would you do things differently next time? Would you come down on the CAA side or the BA side?

Professor Sir John Beddington: I don’t think I would come down on either side for the following reason. The basic physics of the issue are fairly clear. The current regulations allow flying based on the degree of concentration of ash. The whole point here is that it is not so much that the concentration is important but it is the duration of the flight within that concentration. If you go through a particular concentration of ash for 20 seconds, it is vastly different in the effect on engines than if you fly through it for two hours. So the fundamental structure of the regulation is problematic. These were the regulations. This is the sort of thing that will take some while to change because it involves legislation and so on. But in terms of the basic physics of it, it seems to me to be important to be thinking about individual flight plans, and how long a particular flight would go through a particular concentration of ash or a varying concentration of ash.

We then move to the problem of whether the models that the Met Office have allow such a calculation to be made. That’s work in progress, but that’s the way we should be thinking about going forward rather than changing, in any fundamental way, the way that our advice was prepared.

Q359 Graham Stringer: And the timing of SAGE?

Professor Sir John Beddington: We pulled it together. The volcanic ash event happened. I remember I talked very quickly to the senior scientists involved-Julia Slingo from the Met Office, Sue Loughlin from the British Geological Survey and, obviously, the Civil Contingencies Secretariat and the Department for Transport. We had a meeting on the weekend. We then started to pull together some discussions from SAGE, pulling together an appropriate group of people. The first meeting, where we were all together in a room, was preceded by a whole series of fairly detailed discussions. We probably could have done better but in the case of volcanoes, with the benefit of hindsight, we should have realised there was a volcanic ash threat and been able to implement this thing much more quickly than we did. That is accepted. I don’t think, given the circumstances, there were unacceptable delays.

You mentioned the fact that BA had a very different view. One of the things that we did was to hold a conference, which I chaired, for the airline industry in which presentations were made by a number of people, including the Met Office, on what their model actually did. There were members from all the major parts of the industry, including BA, in the audience, and they were able to show from satellite information and the predictions of the model that the model was predicting pretty well the satellite information on the concentrations of ash. I think that was quite important. There were discussions-the CAA had convened the meeting-but that sort of openness within the community was really quite helpful.

There is a problem in terms of generalising from activities on volcanic ash everywhere in the world, in the sense that the skies around the north-east Atlantic are significantly more crowded. If you encounter a volcano and you are flying in south-east Asia, you can actually go round it. To an extent, that is also possible in the USA. But in the north-east Atlantic, around western Europe, the concentration of aircraft and flight paths means that the amount of space you have to manoeuvre in is very substantially lower.

Chair: Can I thank you very much for your attendance this morning?

Examination of Witnesses

Witnesses: Lord Adonis, former Secretary of State for Transport, and Rt Hon Andy Burnham MP, former Secretary of State for Health, gave evidence.

Q360 Chair: Good morning. Lord Adonis and Mr Burnham, you were both senior Ministers in the previous Government, at the heart of Government, and both had the unfortunate responsibility of dealing with two different but difficult circumstances. We want to press you about that in the context of our inquiry. As you know, we are also looking horizontally across the way that science advice is used in emergencies and looking forward at events that might happen in the future as well. In your experience, were you content with the Government’s process of risk assessment and contingency planning? Perhaps you could separately answer that. Who is going to start?

Lord Adonis: Would you like me to start in respect of the ash cloud? The response of the regulator in the scientific community, once the ash cloud crisis had started on 14 April, was, I thought, exemplary. All of the agencies involved-the Civil Aviation Authority, NATS, the Met Office, the Department’s own advisers and the European regulatory authorities-were immediately galvanised into action on addressing this fundamental question, which is, what is a safe regime for flying through concentrations of ash, given that the previous regulatory rule was that any concentrations of ash were not safe for planes to fly through? Or, rather, the rule was, in those words which are engraved on my mind, "Avoid, avoid, avoid". Regulatory authorities in European Member States should not allow planes to take off if there are any notable concentrations of ash.

The issue, which is one that the regulatory authorities have been reflecting on and need to reflect on more, is why this rule was in place in the first place. Of course, it clearly isn’t the case that it’s not safe to fly through concentrations of ash, as you have just heard Professor Beddington say. It is possible, and indeed it proved possible within the course of six days, to put in place a regulatory regime which made it possible to fly through concentrations of ash. The problem was that the International Civil Aviation Organisation, which had set the standards to which individual European regulators were operating, had a rule which essentially prohibited flying through concentrations of ash and did not go to the next stage of looking at a safe regime for flying through ash were ash present in the atmosphere.

My own view, as I look back on it, is that ICAO-the International Civil Aviation Organisation-should have done this work beforehand because, although volcanic eruptions in northern Europe are rare, they are not unprecedented. The Icelandic volcano which erupted in April causing this huge disruption has erupted before. From memory, it was previously in the 1820s, and it is next door to another volcano that has erupted more frequently. The question which needed to be asked, and involves a searching process of self-examination on the part of the International Civil Aviation Organisation and the European regulators, is why, before April 2010, they had not conducted the scientific work that was necessary to put in place a safe regime for flying through concentrations of ash. They are doing that and a new regulatory structure has been put in place, but, if there are any other safety issues of a similar kind which could come from their field, it would be very helpful if they had done the work on this before rather than what actually happened, which is that the work on it had to be done after the volcanic eruption had taken place.

Andy Burnham: Chair, I had the misfortune of arriving at the Department of Health three days after the World Health Organisation declared H1N1 swine flu to be a global pandemic. If nothing else, it confirmed that the political timing of the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull West & Hessle is immaculate, as in all things. So it was a very difficult situation to arrive in.

There was, I think, a difference between the situation that Lord Adonis has just described, in that the world health community had anticipated this situation for some time and, indeed, plans had been based on a more severe virus-H5N1 or bird flu-so we were in some senses well prepared because of that. Indeed, I remember as a junior Health Minister going to many meetings on pandemic preparedness and, perhaps, at times thinking, "Why am I sitting here doing this? Isn’t there something more important I could be doing?" However, in terms of your question on contingency planning, we were extremely well served as Ministers by the depth, the quality and the range of planning that had been conducted over many years across the Government in this country. That placed us in an extremely strong position when it came to the crunch.

I remember the immediate question that was on everyone’s mind was the vaccine. I know you might want to get on to talk about the contracts that we had for vaccine, but I was immediately clear that we were at the head of the queue for vaccine. I can only say to you that, sitting where I was at that time, to be in that position was a position of immense reassurance because it was a new virus, there was emerging evidence about it from around the world but we didn’t know. It turned out to be a mild virus but severe in some cases, and that was in many ways the challenge of swine flu because it wasn’t mild in everybody. We mustn’t forget that 450 or more people died from swine flu. So that was the challenge. In terms of contingency planning, I would say it was excellent, although clearly there are lessons that we can learn.

Your second question was on risk assessment. The issues I would flag up there, as they relate to SAGE and the scientific advice we were getting, is how best to assess the reasonable worst case scenario in an emerging situation as epidemiological evidence about the virus is emerging from around the world. How possible is it to gather that information and then produce reasonable worst case scenarios in an evolving situation, recognising that the figures are, possibly, going to change as more is known about the virus?

The second point would be how to communicate those figures when it is a moving situation and when, perhaps, the media doesn’t understand or doesn’t give people space to explain why figures have changed. I noticed Professor Sir Liam Donaldson spoke about that issue to you, and I think that is a very real learning point that we must all face up to as part of it: how to assess those reasonable worst cases in a proportionate way as evidence emerges in an evolving situation, and then how to communicate it. For me they are crucial things and I wouldn’t say that we have got the right answers although I can give you the best of my experience.

Q361 Chair: In the two cases-the "reasonable worst case scenario" is a phrase which keeps coming back in our evidence sessions-Mr Burnham, you were assessing that against pressures from the Treasury, the costs that were being incurred in preparing for what could have been a much more serious pandemic, and in Lord Adonis’s case, there were huge pressures coming from the commercial world outside that were asking for a different measure to be used. So "reasonable worst case scenario" is an important tool, but do you perceive any alternative way of dealing with these things?

Andy Burnham: I don’t actually, no. The Department of Health had a phrase that they used when I arrived, and I find it reassuring on one level but not on another. They used to say, "Hope for the best, plan for the worst." I was never quite happy with the first part of that phrase. The fact that we did take the precautionary principle has got to be the right thing to do. I’ll give you an example. There was a big debate in the summer of 2009 about the use of antivirals and should they be given to all symptomatic patients or just given to those, perhaps, most at risk or those with the most severe symptoms. I think it was the one occasion where there was a difference of view within SAGE.

If I take your question, you are perhaps leading me to say to what extent cost was then driving those decisions. It was not, actually. At the time, as always, you have an eye on the cost, but I was receiving advice and the Chief Medical Officer was saying to me that he felt, on the basis of the opinion within SAGE and his opinion, it was right to adopt a treat-all strategy, given that we were dealing with a new virus. As I have just said, it was a new virus that was proving to be severe in a small number of cases, attacking the respiratory system of young children with disabilities, for instance.

In those circumstances, when we were just finding out, of course I felt I had no choice but to say that we go with the treat-all strategy. I wouldn’t say the cost was not a consideration but, at that point, public safety absolutely takes precedence over cost.

Q362 Graham Stringer: Did he make it clear to you, as he made it clear to this Committee, that there was no evidence base for the use of antivirals in an epidemic?

Andy Burnham: What was made clear, Graham, was that there was a difference of view about the-

Q363 Graham Stringer: You have said that before, but he came to this Committee and said, "There is no evidence base for the use of antivirals during an epidemic", in those words. Did he make that clear to you?

Andy Burnham: Yes, that was made clear, absolutely, because-obviously-it was an unprecedented situation. There was talk of side effects. The Chief Medical Officer said to me that even among GPs there’s a difference of view. It seemed to me that the right thing to do in that situation was to take the precautionary approach because, in many ways, the lack of an evidence base further reinforced the need to go down the precautionary route.

Lord Adonis: I think there is a fundamental difference in these two cases. In the case that Mr Burnham has just been talking about, the reasonable worst case scenario was, thank goodness, not remotely realised. In the case of the ash cloud, a situation far worse than any worst case scenario that had ever been prepared for literally arrived overnight with the ash cloud and the whole of northern European airspace being closed for successive days leaving millions of passengers stranded.

On the part of the regulatory authorities, work had not taken place on the estimation of what a worst case scenario might be in the case of a volcanic eruption, which is the reason why we had to put in place a new regulatory regime, literally, over the course of a long weekend. It would have been a good thing if it had taken place on the part of the regulatory authorities but it hadn’t. My answer to your question is that I think it is a very good idea to make assessments of reasonable worst case scenarios.

In the case of the ash cloud, I think that would have required international regulators-because, of course, aviation is, by its nature, an international business-to have put in place a safe flying regime in respect of concentrations of ash. It is very telling that in the guidance from the International Civil Aviation Organisation, which is the guidance which led to the closure of European airspace, the opening sentence of that guidance in respect of ash concentration is as follows: "Unfortunately, at present there are no agreed values of ash concentration which constitute a hazard to jet aircraft engines." Those are the opening words. It would have been a jolly good thing if there had been some agreed values and if the regulatory authorities had sought to establish them. So I am fully behind the process of setting worst case scenarios. In the case of the ash cloud crisis, it means that regulators have to look at areas which may be very remote contingencies, like swine flu epidemics, but ones that could well occur and in respect of which they have to have regulatory regimes in place.

Andy Burnham: Could I just make an additional point, Chairman? I agree with Lord Adonis. It is right to make these judgments, particularly in a fast moving and an evolving situation. You have to because the public services need to understand what might be coming. The purpose here is partly about public confidence but it is about preparedness on a much wider field than just in the health service because, obviously, we were looking at local government and schools. There was a very big potential impact.

The question for me that arises is how to do this, in a freedom of information world, in a way that doesn’t alarm the public and lead to headlines which, quite frankly, mean that you might lose some kind of control over the situation.

Q364 Chair: But that happened?

Andy Burnham: No, I wouldn’t say it happened. But I would say that, in the summer of 2009, as cases of swine flu were climbing on a spike that was just unbelievable to watch- and the west midlands was the first place to feel the pressure-it was quite a frightening moment. When you are putting new figures into that situation as people are experiencing a very real change on the ground, the question for me is to what extent a scientific committee can think about public presentation. But that is crucial because that does affect the ability of services to deal with the situation before them because the more there is a sense of concern, the more that public services will be overwhelmed in a disproportionate way.

The one moment I would just pick out for you is when I made a statement to the Commons. I am trying to remember the exact date, but it would have been July 2009. It was at the point when things were getting quite worrying. We had a long debate in the Department of Health about whether or not I would give a figure for a reasonable worst case scenario in terms of number of new cases per day. I had a SAGE range that was just massive. It went from a very small number to an incredibly large number. After prolonged debate I used the phrase, "We could be looking at around 100,000 cases per day."

At the time that changed people’s view of the situation, but it was very much in the middle of the range that SAGE had given me, from memory. It wasn’t at the far end of the reasonable worst case scenario. Towards the end of July, we got up towards 100,000 or more cases per week, so we got well up into the big numbers but we didn’t get close to that figure.

Given that I had been given those figures in a Cabinet Committee, I wanted, and I think Alan Johnson did too, to put figures into the public domain. I think the Committee should ponder this question so that you can give further help to Ministers in the future. You are making judgments on the spot because you don’t want a newspaper to say, "They are withholding figures that say there could be this x thousand number of cases", because then it would be sensationalised and it would be a secret paper given to a Committee. Equally, you don’t want to alarm the public.

In the end, Liam Donaldson and I agreed that the publication of that figure probably actually helped to snap public services more on to the front foot in terms of getting ready, and it probably helped get everybody into the right place to deal with what was before them. This is an absolutely crucial question, I think.

Q365 Chair: I agree with you. It is a crucial question. So you were aware that there are limitations on the use of "reasonable worst case scenario" in the context of the way it might be interpreted outside?

Andy Burnham: In a freedom of information age you have to think about that, don’t you?

Q366 Chair: Yes. Did you take any advice either through SAGE or other sources, from behavioural scientists, about how best to handle that?

Andy Burnham: We debated it pretty endlessly in the CCC committee. The four UK Health Ministers debated it in a telephone conference. In the end, Chairman, it became a matter of political judgment, I have to say. I made a decision about the figure I put into the public domain. There were no guidelines for me to say what I should and shouldn’t say. I come back to the point that SAGE can have a discussion, but when they are actually putting it down in black and white on a paper that is going to a Cabinet Committee in an FOI age, you’ve got to think about what you do with that information. I took the view in this situation that we had to be as open and transparent with the public as we possibly could be so that we didn’t lead to any sense that there was information being withheld. Looking back, I would say that it was quite a precarious judgment to make.

Q367 Chair: Lord Adonis, clearly, you have said to us that international agencies were ill prepared, and that opening sentence you read out illustrates it extremely well. But we, as a nation state, are part of the international community. We can’t cop out. Why were we so unprepared?

Lord Adonis: That is a question which needs to be asked of the Civil Aviation Authority because they are the regulatory agency. I never did get to the bottom of the answer. I haven’t seen your list of witnesses and I don’t know whether you have called the chief executive or the chair of the Civil Aviation Authority, but the key question is: Why the threat of volcanic ash over north European airspace? The point that the chief scientific adviser made previous to this hearing is a very important one. It is because of the concentration of flight paths in northern Europe that the ash concentration is such a big issue because you can’t go around ash clouds, as in the United States or in Asia. It is why the potential risk to flights of ash concentrations hadn’t been taken into account as a risk factor to safe flying in Europe.

The answer, which was always given at the time, and one that I think is worth probing, is that volcanic eruptions don’t take place. "This is an act of God." Of course, on one level it was an act of God, and there haven’t been any recent volcanic eruptions. The issue for those whose job it is to reflect on these events and plan for the future is to explore whether in fact there should have been a higher level of readiness given that volcanic eruptions are not unprecedented in Northern Europe. As I said earlier, they have taken place. The particular volcano that erupted and which caused the ash crisis has a pattern of eruptions over the last 600 years.

Q368 Chair: We’ve heard from Sir John about the science advice, but you never had any advice from your civil service that said, "Minister, it’s your job to predict this"?

Lord Adonis: It manifestly wasn’t my job to predict it. It was the job of the regulatory agencies to have in place a safe flying regulatory regime in respect of this hazard, concentrations of ash, in the way they do for many other hazards. For example, a big issue that they are constantly dealing with is bird strike. There are rules in place for how one deals with a bird strike, what are acceptable levels, and a whole lot of others. For fog and almost every conceivable weather eventuality there is guidance and rules in place. There wasn’t in respect of concentrations of ash.

As I say, the reason that was given at the time is, "Volcanoes don’t erupt in Northern Europe", which, as a general rule, is true, but in fact there is a pattern of volcanic eruptions from these volcanoes in Iceland. If one could rewind the clock, that should have led the regulatory authorities, in my view, to have worked with ICAO to prepare in advance for what were agreed values of ash concentration constituting a hazard to jet aircraft engines so that we weren’t faced with the wholesale closure of airspace. It wasn’t a particularly productive use of my time to start asking those questions in these six days, though, because that was a historical question. We were dealing with a crisis in real time. The issue which I had to confront as Transport Secretary was working with the regulatory authorities, with the aircraft manufacturers-and with my European colleagues, because this was a Europe-wide issue-to put in place a regulatory regime that would establish, in the judgment of the scientific advisers to those regulatory authorities, safe concentrations of ash which would permit flying to resume.

Q369 Stephen Mosley: Mr Burnham, you have answered pretty much everything I was going to ask because I was going to ask about risk and communication with the public. I have one question, though. I know that Dr Peter Holden from the BMA has expressed a concern that there was, maybe, too much information out there and that sometimes it could get confusing for people if there were multiple sources of information. I know that in the US the Government set up a flu.gov website that was a single source of information for both the public and for medical professionals. Do you think something like that in the UK would be a sensible way forward as a way of getting a single source of information?

Andy Burnham: We could certainly look at that as a model. We tried something similar in that we instituted, as the situation developed, a weekly press briefing with the chief medical officer. We built an expectation that that was the place where the most dependable figures would be given and the context for those figures would be provided. I think that is important, too. It is not just about figures. It is also about the wider context in which those figures are given.

One of the things, in terms of this question of communication, is that I went to the first couple of those with Liam Donaldson but, in the end, I decided to remove myself from them because the presence of a Minister or politician just upped the ante. I could see it. It immediately became a thing of, "Oh, well, let’s get them on the back foot on something or other", whereas when Liam did them it tended to attract the scientific correspondents rather than the political correspondents and it led to a much more balanced coverage. It was a deliberate decision. In the first two weeks in my job I went to them. I felt I had to be taking a grip, blah-blah, and all of that. But, actually, I realised that the more sensible thing was for Liam to do it in a non-political, not super-charged environment where the figures could be given in context. Whether we could build on that approach and have a single portal approach is a very good question.

Communication is very important in a transport situation, of course, in terms of whether people add to the problem by doing something that you don’t want them to do, but in a health situation it is utterly crucial because alarmist reporting can lead to more people going to GPs, more people ringing NHS Direct and more people ringing the national pandemic flu service. Keeping that balanced tone in reporting was fundamental to the ability of the NHS to cope with what was before it, and understanding that balance is a very complicated business.

Q370 Stephen Mosley: Moving on to the ash cloud, one of the things that we saw in Committee was that there was a big gulf between British Airways and the CAA in terms of what they thought the appropriate response would be. What levels of communication were there between those organisations and Ministers at the time?

Lord Adonis: There was constant communication. Once the airspace was closed, there was constant communication between the airlines, the Civil Aviation Authority, NATS and the Department for Transport. Indeed, it was a very productive relationship, although, of course, British Airways and the other airlines were making very clear in public their view that it was safe to fly. Let’s be more precise. What they said was that they believed it was possible to identify safe flying paths through the ash cloud by identifying areas of lower ash concentration and paths which didn’t involve long flight paths through those areas of low concentration. They believed it was possible to do that and they were making that view very loud and clear in public.

They were also working very hard behind the scenes on establishing what was a safe flying regime. For example, very rapidly after the closure of airspace British Airways got test flights in the air, as did KLM. Indeed, KLM got their test flights up before British Airways. Other European airlines did the same. There was Met Office monitoring equipment on Met Office planes and on the commercial planes as well. All of the data that came from those test flights by the airlines and the test plane sent up by the Met Office fed into the scientific evaluation that then led to the revised advice which was adopted by all of the European safety regulators in a co-ordinated manner, which differentiated between different levels of ash concentration, that significantly narrowed the no-fly zone and made it possible to re-open the good parts of northern Europe airspace.

So, although, as you rightly say, British Airways was very vocal, as were the other European airlines, about the need to revise the safety regime so that flights could resume over a good part of northern Europe, they worked closely and productively with the safety regulators to make available the data and information that were crucial to revising the safety regime.

Andy Burnham: Could I just make a supplementary point? It does refer back to the single portal question that Mr Mosley asked. The closest we had to that was the Health Protection Agency, which, in the early stages of the pandemic, provided a surveillance function across the country in terms of how the virus was spreading and also drew in information from its counterpart bodies around the world. That was very helpful in those early stages and helped us to begin to map how quickly this virus was developing.

It is important, if the Committee is taking evidence from the Government, that you ask which body would do this function in the future, given that, I believe, the Health Protection Agency is no more. It was something that I relied on heavily in the early days. I went to visit the Health Protection Agency in the West Midlands who were co-ordinating a cross-agency response to an incredibly difficult situation that grew out of nowhere. They were, obviously, responsible for the containment phase of the response. It is really important that questions are asked as to how the Government would plan to operate that early containment surveillance function in a further pandemic, given that the Health Protection Agency has ceased to be. As shadow Health Secretary, I was beginning to ask that question. I don’t believe it has been adequately answered yet, but for me it is a crucial question on which the Government needs to provide clarity. I think a pandemic is as likely today or tomorrow as it was then. We have had swine flu and people think, "Oh well, that’s the pandemic for the next 20 years." Obviously, it is as likely there’ll be a new one and at any time.

Chair: We have taken a little longer than we intended, but there are a few more short, sharp questions we want to ask you.

Q371 Pamela Nash: Lord Adonis, you have already touched on the Civil Aviation Authority’s lack of previous information on what could happen in a volcanic ash emergency. You have also spoken about British Airways and how quick they were to put up test flights. Do you think that airline operators should have more of a role in deciding when it is safe to fly if they have more up-to-date information?

Lord Adonis: They play a key role. The regulatory regime, which is an interactive process between the airlines and the safety authorities, is constantly undertaking risk assessments in respect of the whole range of potential risks to flights, so they do play that role-and they did play that role in this case. The key issue here was that the contingency planning hadn’t taken place because none of the safety authorities or, indeed, the airlines themselves regarded it as a contingency that there would be a volcanic eruption that would lead to an ash cloud that would therefore mean, adopting ICAO’s guidelines, that European airspace had to be closed. The problem in this case was not that the structures were not in place. As soon as the ash cloud struck, the airlines, the aircraft manufacturers-who also played a key role-the safety authorities and the scientific advisers to my Department all worked 24 hours a day to put in place a regime that would enable flights to resume. The issue in this case is simply that this hadn’t been regarded as a contingency before the Icelandic volcano erupted.

Q372 Pamela Nash: I would like to ask you a couple of questions on Government co-ordination. There have been criticisms of the Department for Transport that they did not take a lead as soon as they should have on the volcanic ash issue. How would you respond?

Lord Adonis: I don’t think that is a fair criticism at all. From the moment that the Department was advised that airspace was likely to have to close because of this eruption, all of the relevant agencies and authorities and all of my then advisers in the Department swung into action. I don’t believe that more could have been done more quickly. Indeed, you can see that by looking at what happened in other European countries too. We all worked in parallel on this crisis and almost all north European countries re-opened their airspace on the same day. There was a bit of a debate about whether we should have opened on the morning or the afternoon of the day when the new regulations were put in place. Because of the need for the Civil Aviation Authority’s board to meet-because it was that board which had to put in place the new regime under which NATS had to operate-it took a few hours for that process to take place, but that was a proper decision-making process. Indeed, quite a number of countries didn’t open their airspace until after the United Kingdom did. So I don’t think the criticism of the authorities is fair from the point when the crisis struck.

As I say, the issue that the ash cloud raises is whether adequate risk assessments had been done by the international safety agencies before the ash crisis.

Q373 Pamela Nash: Just quickly, Mr Burnham, you spoke a little bit about trying to get an approach across the UK in response to swine flu. Does the fact that health is a devolved issue prove an obstacle both in planning for this and for the response?

Andy Burnham: No, I certainly wouldn’t say it was an obstacle. It presented a challenge in terms of the different natures of the health systems across the UK. It was clear to me that much depended upon the personal relationship that we began to develop between the four of us, and we did. Edwina Hart, Nicola Sturgeon, Michael McGimpsey and I-the four of us-began to develop quite a good relationship. I think that was crucial because we were dealing with some very difficult stuff in a very urgent situation. That carried us through.

If I could make a suggestion to the Committee, it would be this. We had the CCC, which had old Uncle Tom Cobleigh and everybody in the debate, which has its function, but the crucial engine of this thing was the four UK Health Ministers. We were doing our thing by telephone call whereas CCC had all of the paraphernalia of Government behind it. In fact, it would have made more sense for us all to meet face to face somehow every week, the four Health Ministers, because we were the ones doing the day-to-day operational stuff. That relationship was crucial to the proper handling of the crisis. We managed it, we found a way, we got through it and we made it work.

If I could, I would just like to make a couple of very quick comments. I want to pay tribute to the Department of Health-in fact, the Cabinet Office, the Secretariat and everybody. We were tremendously well served, not just during the crisis but by the planning that had been done before it. I attended a meeting of 12 Health Ministers in Washington in October or November 2009, where all of the other Health Ministers were saying that they had absolute pandemonium back home in terms of the clamour for vaccine. On the TV screens in America at the time there were queues round blocks of people fighting for the swine flu vaccine. It was just chaos. However, because of the orderly way in which we handled it, with SAGE giving advice about priority groups and a queuing system, it really worked well. We had a grip on the situation and we handled it without causing any public alarm. We were the only country, it seemed, that had that benefit.

As a very final thought, the structure of the NHS is crucial to the manner in which we responded. The chief executive at the time used to say, with a glint in his eye, that we had gone into what he called, "command and control mode". He quite liked the idea of being in command and control mode, which perhaps shows the top-down instincts of the NHS.

I would also ask a question. Sometimes the NHS can respond better than other health systems elsewhere because of the ability to put a message out quickly that is then followed up. In the new NHS that is being created, would it be as efficient if it is a much more atomised, localised system? Localism is everything, we are told. Actually, I don’t agree with that, personally. I think the strength of the NHS is the ability at times for it to do exactly what is needed to be done. In this case, again, I was hugely well served by that.

Q374 Stephen Metcalfe: Recognising that we are short of time, I want to turn to the role of SAGE. But just before I do that, Lord Adonis, you very much tried to put the responsibility for having identified the volcanic ash cloud on to the Civil Aviation Authority and the international authorities. Do you not think that Government has a role in identifying risk and making sure that those risks are on the register?

Lord Adonis: For the purposes of this discussion, I take the Civil Aviation Authority to be part of Government. They are the regulatory authority established by Government for the purpose of ensuring that we have a safe flying regime.

Q375 Stephen Metcalfe: Did you ever query with them whether they had identified risk?

Lord Adonis: I, myself, did not question whether they had a safe flying regime in place in respect of ash concentrations for a volcanic eruption, no.

Q376 Stephen Metcalfe: No. I accept that.

Lord Adonis: That is the answer, I am afraid, to that. I wish I had. If I had had better predictive powers, I would have had them into my office immediately after my appointment and said, "Can you tell me, if there is a volcanic eruption, what your plans are?" Unfortunately, I didn’t have that foresight.

Q377 Stephen Metcalfe: But were you identifying them? Was the idea that there were risks within the Department that might come up? Was that a topic that was discussed with you and your advisers, "What are the risks to our Department?", and was that something that was being looked at?

Lord Adonis: At the official level these discussions do take place, but I am not aware of them having taken place in respect of ash, which is the key issue. The big issue, to come back to it again, is that it simply hadn’t been identified as a contingency, so it was completely different from swine flu. What we were faced with was a crisis caused by an eventuality which, beforehand, had not been regarded as a contingency.

Q378 Stephen Metcalfe: Our investigation goes slightly wider than just swine flu and volcanic ash. What we are looking at is how the Government use scientific advice in an emergency and what preparation they have made for that, such as, "Was there a general risk assessment?" But could you give me examples of where SAGE has advised you in either role, either specifically within the two areas that we are talking about or perhaps at other times, and whether that advice was useful? Did you ever reject any SAGE advice that was given to you?

Lord Adonis: No, is the answer to the second question. In respect of the first, if I can answer it more generally, in dealing with eventualities in respect of terrorist attacks, my advisers were constantly making risk assessments-constantly-and had to do so in what were very difficult circumstances. In my time as Transport Secretary, you will remember we had the serious attempted bombing of the plane from the Netherlands, and that was a constant preoccupation of advisers to the Department.

Andy Burnham: I wouldn’t overplay the role of SAGE, necessarily, because in our context, the JCVI probably were more important in terms of specific advice on treatment options. SAGE were often providing a broad context and information in which to make the decisions. They were providing specific advice, although, as I mentioned, there was a split opinion around antivirals. You must remember that in the health context the JCVI has a crucial role in advising on vaccination and vaccination priority. I would encourage you to look at those two together. But no, we didn’t. I think David Harper said, when he gave evidence to you, that Ministers always based decisions on the scientific advice. Perhaps that wasn’t the perception of Ministers but, believe me, at all times, all four UK Health Ministers said, "We will be guided by the science. We cannot go outside the science or the scientific advice." We stuck to that as an absolute 24-carat principle throughout swine flu.

Lord Adonis: If I could echo Mr Burnham’s point, it wasn’t SAGE which I dealt with in respect of terrorist threats. It was TRANSEC, the transport safety organisation, which, of course, has very high level scientific and other advisers in guiding its work.

Chair: A final question, Graham.

Q379 Graham Stringer: Andy, you said that you and the Health Ministers from the other countries in the UK were guided by the scientific advice. There was a dispute, wasn’t there, in terms of order of vaccination? Some of the other Health Ministers wanted to vaccinate children first rather than the most at risk. How did you deal with that?

Andy Burnham: There was a difference of opinion both on use of antivirals and-I wouldn’t say it was huge-different perspectives on what we should do vis-à-vis vaccination. We often took that and then put it back to the JCVI and said, "We have a different perspective." We asked the JCVI for clarification a couple of times, asking them to take into specific account feelings that Ministers had. If I can say this, you and I spoke at that time around children and whether or not there should be a schools’ vaccination policy.

Graham Stringer: We did.

Andy Burnham: It was clear that schools were the engine of spread, weren’t they? The schools broke up for the summer. In Scotland, of course, because the schools broke up a little earlier, immediately the cases flattened in mid-July. For us, it was at the end of July. So the role that schools were playing was clear.

We, as Ministers, all of us, based on the discussions we were having in Parliament-not everybody felt as strongly about that-asked and pushed JCVI a couple of times again to advise us whether this was the right thing to do. The very clear advice that came back was, "No, don’t vaccinate otherwise healthy children. That is not a proportionate response to the situation we are in. We are dealing with a mild virus. Yes, it’s severe in some, but get the vaccination quickly to those at most risk of developing serious illness or at most risk, even, of death." As I said before, there were kids with severe disabilities who had complications with their respiratory system. They were clearly at more risk, as were pregnant women. Bear in mind, we did not have an unlimited supply of vaccine. What we had had to go first to where the risk was. I think we were, in the end, advised very well. The tendency was-all of us reading the newspapers-"Oh, look at schools. Why don’t we vaccinate schools?" It was a natural politician’s response, if you like. This was an area, I think, where the scientists had it absolutely right. They saw that there was a limited supply of vaccine. In the conditions of swine flu, where it was a mild virus for most people, some wouldn’t even notice they had had it, some would have a very mild cold, but in some cases it was dangerous. That was the challenge of swine flu, if you like: mild in most but severe in some.

In those circumstances, it was clearly right to have a priority group system where the available vaccine went to those groups in order. I think it was a classic example of where the scientists absolutely had it right and potentially some of the political response had it wrong.

Q380 Graham Stringer: Andrew, there was a general election going on when you had your crisis. How did that affect it?

Lord Adonis: Not at all. I’m sorry, I mean that I didn’t do any campaigning while this was going on. I had more important things to attend to.

Andy Burnham: It took me off the campaign trail as well.

Lord Adonis: I, personally, as Minister, was on this every waking hour from the moment I was phoned on a campaign visit to be told that we had this ash cloud. It was explained to me what this meant and that it would lead to airspace having to be closed. At the moment that was said to me, I realised that we faced a national emergency and I came straight back to London. In my waking hours I didn’t leave my office until we got the airspace re-opened.

So far as the Government was concerned, we behaved in full operational mode with no impact whatsoever caused by the election. I don’t believe, if the crisis had struck at any other time, that we would have reacted any differently. Indeed, it continued after because, although the immediate crisis was over after six days, I was still spending a good deal of my time dealing with the after-effects, in particular, some of the consequential decisions that needed to be taken in terms of European regulation right up until the moment when the Government changed hands. Two days before the general election, I spent the day in Brussels at the European Council with European counterparts when we put in place a whole set of arrangements for handling the regulation of ash concentrations and how a new regulatory regime, which was then temporary, would be made permanent. That process, as I say, continued until the change of Government and it was, as far as I could see, entirely seamless.

Andy Burnham: Now I know why you cancelled that visit to my constituency.

Lord Adonis: I am glad to say that Mr Burnham got re-elected without my help. He may have needed help, but I wasn’t there.

Q381 Chair: Can I thank you very much for your attendance this morning? It has been an extremely useful session. Thank you.

Examination of Witnesses

Witnesses: Rt Hon Baroness Neville-Jones, Minister of State for Security, and Rt Hon Mr David Willetts MP, Minister of State for Universities and Science, gave evidence.

Q382 Chair: Good morning, and apologies for running a little late. We have just had a couple of very interesting sessions to start with. Baroness Neville-Jones, this is the first time we have asked you to appear before us. Welcome.

Baroness Neville-Jones: Yes, Chairman; thank you.

Q383 Chair: Mr Willetts is a regular. We are coming to the end of our evidence sessions on this area and there are some important questions on which we would like to press you. Do Ministers now take the final decision as to what goes on the national risk assessment, and exactly who do you get your scientific advice from?

Baroness Neville-Jones: That sounds like my question. Clearly, drawing up the national risk assessment is a team effort. Let me start with the scientific advice, because there is obviously a process. The Cabinet Office takes charge of the regular updating of the national risk assessment and that is done by a team in the Civil Contingencies Secretariat, who have a structured relationship with the scientific advice available to Government through the Government Office for Science and particularly Sir John Beddington. Scientific advice and, indeed, help in the definition of what constitutes the risk, particularly both likelihood and impact, is fed in from the very start. I wouldn’t say that there is any stage at which scientific advice is not available or, indeed, not actively involved in the process of consideration.

When it comes to the actual approval of the risk assessment itself, that does go to Ministers, and individual risks, depending on the nature of the risk, can be discussed in detail. It is fair to say that the Ministers do take responsibility for the national risk assessment, the grid on which it is founded, and indeed, in the case of the more sensitive risks, the ones which are more difficult-the high risks, often low likelihood, but not always-get considerable scrutiny and I, personally, give them considerable scrutiny as the Minister who is charge of resilience.

Q384 Chair: Who gives you the scientific advice, though, because Sir John said it’s not him?

Baroness Neville-Jones: It will depend on the subject, obviously, because you will have observed that there are a whole series of committees now exist in relation to different sorts of advice that the Government need. The Civil Contingencies Secretariat will be liable to turn to people who have been on those committees or who are able to give advice as to whom they should in turn seek advice from. It won’t always be the person who is familiar to Government who will eventually be involved in giving the advice, because they may, in turn, say, "I think you ought to talk to X", and X is somebody who has not previously been involved in giving advice to Government. It is quite an open process.

Q385 Chair: But X could be someone anywhere in the country?

Baroness Neville-Jones: Or internationally, Chair.

Q386 Chair: Indeed. And many of the risks exist in many locations up and down the country. Why is it that the Local Government Association is on record as saying that the National Risk Register is "rarely informed by issues identified at the regional and sub-regional level"?

Baroness Neville-Jones: I had not heard that comment, which I take seriously. Chair: I do because I live in a hazard area.

Baroness Neville-Jones: Absolutely. It is the case, however, that there are regional committees, so-called STACs, which do indeed inform the process. The point you are making is probably that structured regional scientific and local advice needs to be fed into the national risk assessment, and particularly the register, when it cascades down to the local level. I take that point. It is perfectly fair and sensible.

Q387 Chair: Who is allowed access to the national risk assessment, and what kind of information is withheld from the register?

Baroness Neville-Jones: From the register? You are right to distinguish between those two because they are, obviously, different and the National Risk Register is an unclassified version of the NRA. One of the things that we want to try and do, if I might just say that, is to put as much into the National Risk Register as we can; that is to say, not to have a big difference between what is in the NRA and what is in the National Risk Register. There are, however, some items in the National Risk Register that are genuinely very sensitive and it is difficult to put it all into the public domain.

The National Risk Register is an open document. It can be seen by people. It is part of the guide to local authorities at the sub-regional and regional level. We want to make that document as useful as possible and, therefore, as full as possible. The classified document is available to those who have the right clearance to see it.

Q388 Chair: I asked Sir David Pepper this exact question last night-

Baroness Neville-Jones: And?

Chair: -about the areas that you and I have been interested in over a number of years in terms of cyber-threats.

Baroness Neville-Jones: Absolutely. Yes.

Q389 Chair: Some of those cyber-threats are significant threats to civilian parts of the nation’s structures-banks, utilities and so on. There are great chunks of those areas where people don’t have any security clearance.

Baroness Neville-Jones: Correct.

Q390 Chair: How do we manage that difficult relationship?

Baroness Neville-Jones: There is what we do now and there is what we hope to do in the future. If you look at the National Risk Register, you will see that electronic attack is on it. It is one of the things that we need to develop as the result of developing the cyber-security strategy, which is something which is now going to take shape in the next few months, and we hope to publish the strategy in the spring. Therefore, our treatment in the National Risk Register, as it stands, and the assessment, is incomplete. However, that doesn’t mean to say that Government isn’t active, because there is a serious threat both to Government systems and, as I think is implied in your question, the critical national infrastructure, which is largely in private hands.

There is a close and co-operative relationship between CSOC, which is developing national situational awareness. This has further to go, but it is going to be absolutely key to the development of and building on existing close co-operation between public and private operators, which is what I have described as being both a strategic and an operational partnership with the private sector. What we would like to do is to develop our policies in co-operation with the private sector, given that they are key owners and key operators and are themselves very often suppliers to Government. It makes a very great deal of sense not just for the Government to try on its own to specify what it needs but to conduct a much more co-operative relationship of the kind where you define what the problem is together and you solve it together.

Then there needs to be an operational relationship where the situational awareness which Government itself develops, which I would hope the private sector would feed into, will then be available at times of emergency-that is to say, if there is an attack-as a source, first of all, to report into but also, then, to be the base on which decisions are taken about what happens next and what solutions are arrived at. I would see it as being something which is both strategic in character and is there as the underlying framework in which policy is made but also the operating framework for keeping the country secure in cyber.

Q391 Chair: But there is, undoubtedly, this conflict with areas where national security comes in but advice, guidance and expertise reside in the technical parts of the private sector-the supply chain to Government-but there is also a different level of expertise, hugely important, in areas like the banks and so on. This is going to present you with a big challenge, isn’t it?

Baroness Neville-Jones: Yes. You can, I think, exaggerate it. Certainly, there is an argument that not everything is going to be readily available. My own view is that a very large number of the problems that we will face, the issues that we will need to try and solve and the ways in which we will need to find solutions to existing problems can be abstracted from the data that is the sensitive issue. Very often, you have a systems problem and you need to try and solve it. You do not need to have access to the data that it carries in order to be able to make a worthwhile contribution to the solution of that problem.

I think you can exaggerate the extent to which it is absolutely necessary for somebody who is outside the Government circle, who may not wish, themselves, to take Government clearance. The Government, on the whole, wants to clear people who can help it, but if that’s the case I don’t think these people are excluded from giving extraordinarily helpful, worthwhile information.

I would say that one other area that could also be regarded as constituting a problem is reputational risk. Companies are known not to want, quite understandably, to get themselves into trouble with either their competitors or the markets in being shown to have had some kind of cyber-accident, if I can put it that way. But I think there are ways round that too. It does involve developing a trusted circle between Government and both operators and suppliers in which they are willing to talk to each other but in which, equally-I think, in the national interest-the solution is found without there being great damage to the individual reputation of the company.

Q392 Pamela Nash: I would like to ask you, Baroness Neville-Jones, how the Cabinet Office chooses a lead Government Department when a crisis ensues. Is it an active choice or does the Cabinet Office sit back, as it were, and wait for one to emerge?

Baroness Neville-Jones: Normally, it is not difficult to see to which Government Department the lead should fall. Most topics present themselves with an obvious answer. If it doesn’t, I can give you an example. I think space weather is one area that covers many Departments and it is not abundantly obvious right from the outset which Government Department should actually lead. In that situation, and particularly if you have something you need to deal with, as we did, then the Cabinet Office will act and it will draw in the Government Departments that are needed to be there in order to handle whatever crisis it is. What we don’t intend to do is to end up with the Cabinet Office becoming departmentally responsible. At the moment, particularly in relation to space, where there is yet no decision on which Government Department should actually take the lead responsibility, we are looking at all the factors. There is ongoing work to decide where the bulk of the responsibility should lie. That will depend, to some extent, on the analysis of the factors that go into your assessment of likelihood, impact and, therefore, risk, and the nature of those risks. I think that is the procedural answer to your question.

Q393 Pamela Nash: That’s interesting. What I was trying to get to the bottom of is whether a list of departmental responsibilities is enough, and what you have told us is that in very specific issues it is not. So there is work that goes on behind the scenes to prepare.

Baroness Neville-Jones: A decision has to be taken-absolutely. You can’t just stop, when the emergency is over, deciding how you will, in future, handle another emergency should it arise. That is an ongoing issue for us and we will, indeed, take a decision on where it should lie.

I might say, and I think it is important to understand this, that the Government is less and less stove-piped in the way it carries out business. A lead Government Department may well be in the chair but other Departments round the table will be absolutely vital to the collective solution that the Government brings to any emergency.

Q394 Pamela Nash: On space weather, which you mentioned, what are your views on the Office of Cyber Security, for instance, on solar and cyber attacks, or the UK Space Agency on space weather actually taking a co-ordinating role if an emergency was to occur between Government Departments?

Baroness Neville-Jones: The Space Agency would need, I think, to be involved. In fact, I would regard the Space Agency as being one of our resources in future for developing the policy that we need to pursue on the risks involved in severe space weather. We have been forewarned, in a sense, that the sunspot cycle is coming to a peak and it looks as though it is going to be a fairly vigorous peak. It, therefore, behoves us to have laid a good ground for that. I would regard the Space Agency as being both a resource nationally for some expertise but also being a connection to international expertise on it as well. Clearly, if you get vigorous space weather and, in particular, you get spikes in the solar cycle, it can clearly affect, in particular, telecommunications, not only power. There are a number of utilities we need to look at under that head.

Q395 Chair: Members of the Committee saw some very interesting presentations yesterday at the British Antarctic Survey, for example.

Baroness Neville-Jones: Absolutely.

Q396 Chair: Mr Willetts, this spills into your bailiwick as well. Do you see the Space Agency having a key role here?

Mr Willetts: Absolutely. I agree with what the Baroness said. We have a double role. There is a role in obtaining information and research evidence and there is also, of course, co-ordinating with the private sector, because things like privately operated satellites are, clearly, vulnerable. So there is a double interest. Indeed, it is something we have already discussed briefly and I hope to put back on the agenda at the Space Leadership Council, which I co-chair.

Q397 Graham Stringer: Do you think the National Grid is at risk? We have had slightly conflicting evidence. The sun is approaching one of its phases when it might be ejecting more stuff. Do you believe that the National Grid is at risk?

Baroness Neville-Jones: The National Grid is itself doing an assessment at the moment because precisely the question you have asked is the one that we need to have more of a fix on than we have at the moment. My feeling is that there must be some risk. Every country, it turns out, is specific in this. There are no generalisations and a lot depends, for instance, on how many overhead lines you’ve got, how much you have buried underground, and specific vulnerabilities, such as, I’m told, when the power lines come from underwater to on-land. That junction, apparently, is a specific vulnerability. The answer to your question is that we need to do, and this is what the National Grid is doing, a study in specific detail on UK conditions. The answer to your question is that there must be some risk. What we don’t yet know, but I think they are reporting in the spring, is how great it is.

Q398 Graham Stringer: Will that be made public?

Baroness Neville-Jones: I would think there is every good reason to suppose that knowledge about it should be in the public domain, yes, absolutely.

Q399 Stephen Mosley: In some of the evidence that we have seen, in particular relating to cyber-security, there has been a suggestion that there are two separate cultures-one intelligence and defence and one the civil side of things-and that information flows only one way, and I think you can guess which way that is. Do you agree with that analysis at all?

Baroness Neville-Jones: I think there have, historically, been two tribes. Yes, I think that is fair comment. One of the things we are trying to do in the cyber-security strategy is, frankly, to break that down. If you learn anything about modern Government it is that stovepipes won’t do and that you lose greatly if you don’t allow both information and technique to flow both ways. If you look at the sciences that are going to be involved in any security strategy that we have, it’s the same for both communities. I do take the view that GCHQ is the right organisation for it, but by having an organisation in Government that crosses those boundaries and services both, in that respect, I personally think we are better placed than the Americans, who have the NSA, which is very distinctly defence. Then it has other less well defined structures in the civilian sphere. I think we have a better chance of bringing our community together on a national basis.

Q400 Chair: Would that be strengthened if there was greater representation of scientists and engineers across the civil service? Isn’t part of the underlying problem that the stovepipes are, in a sense, enhanced because of the characteristics of the population?

Baroness Neville-Jones: I think scientists can certainly help us to break down the stovepipes, yes. One of the things this Government is trying to do is to break down the stovepipes. That is one of the reasons why we have the National Security Council, and this sort of issue would go to the National Security Council. So it does help to break down stovepipes at both the departmental consideration and also ministerial consideration. You can’t present a paper to a collection of Ministers if it doesn’t cover all the ambits and all the facets that it needs to. So I think it does help that.

Q401 Chair: Several witnesses in our inquiry have touched on the absence of a chief scientific officer at the Treasury. What is your view?

Baroness Neville-Jones: I note it is a Department without.

Chair: We will interpret that.

Q402 Stephen Mosley: Still on co-operation but more on international co-operation, we have heard in both space weather and in cyber-security the importance of international co-operation between ourselves, in particular, and people like America and Europe, but also elsewhere. How does the UK resolve the tension between co-ordinating and sharing information with some countries and also doing the opposite in hiding information from others?

Baroness Neville-Jones: I think the answer is that we certainly do have closer partners. This is true of all Governments. All Governments have their close relationships and their less close relationships. In this sort of area, in cyber-security, for instance, one would want fairly close relations. When it comes to something like space weather, the circles within which you would want to consult, spread and share information would be quite broad because, apart from anything else, our state of knowledge generally is not so brilliant that one would want to exclude the possibility of obtaining information from quite far-flung sources.

When it comes to some of the more sensitive forms of activity in which science is involved, of which cyber is one, you have to discriminate a bit between your close partners and others, if only because you do have some adversaries in that game. There is a difference between those fields in which you may be talking more about threat than hazard and those fields in which you are talking about hazard.

Q403 Stephen Metcalfe: Mr Willetts, during our investigation we have seen the value of scientific advice across Government. I am sure the Government appreciates that. There is a small concern, though. As we see departmental spending reduce, how do we make sure that we maintain that scientific capability within individual Departments and that that is not the area that gets squeezed?

Mr Willetts: This is something that is very important and it is why Sir John Beddington and I wrote jointly to Cabinet colleagues during the CSR process reminding them of the importance of continuing with their R&D responsibilities, and inviting them to come to us if they were planning any substantial reduction in departmental R&D. Of course, the position is still being finalised as people work through the detail of their CSR settlements, but, as I reported to this Committee last week, in general, we feel it is working quite well. We have a health budget with a continuing robust commitment to R&D; Defence is doing pretty well on R&D; and DIFD is doing quite well on R&D. But Sir John and I carry on monitoring this. As yet, we have not identified a Department that seems to us to be making a massive reduction in its R&D effort.

Q404 Stephen Metcalfe: That’s good to hear. You have touched on the R&D side of things. Taking the research and development issue and applying it to Government advice in emergencies, who should be funding that research? Should it be the individual Departments or should there be some other body?

Mr Willetts: If you take a step back, if you mean the scientific capacity within the nation to understand these challenges, that is something that we finance via research councils and via the QR money that goes to universities. Without being complacent, I think we are fortunate. We are one of the nations that, facing these challenges, probably has a more broadly-based scientific community to draw on than just about anywhere else. If you mean specifically, I know there is an issue that has arisen on these specific exercises about the exact budgetary funding when NERC finds itself providing resource during the volcanic ash episode. During the crisis itself, it’s common sense-people just get on with it. It’s true to say that now there are some accounting issues that are still being resolved. During these crises individual scientists are very good at coming forward on a pro bono basis and providing their advice and assistance, but I don’t think it would be fair if that was the basis on which we always worked, especially if the time commitment becomes substantial. We do need mechanisms to provide, in specific circumstances, proper financial support for people who help out during a crisis.

Q405 Stephen Metcalfe: Where a potential emergency has been identified and it makes it on to the national risk assessment but there isn’t any research necessarily being undertaken across the wider scientific community, what role do you think the Government has? Should it direct someone who is already funded to look at that or should it fund that research itself?

Mr Willetts: We do try through the research councils, when a big issue has been identified, to commission research in the area. Cyber-security is a very good example. It is clearly coming up the agenda. We recognise we need to have a strong in-house capacity on that, and work is currently going on as to how we might commission background research in that whole area that can be drawn on. I don’t know if the Baroness wants to add to that.

Baroness Neville-Jones: That’s right. In the case of cyber, of course, there is specific work that the national research councils might do. There is also a big reservoir in the academic world. What we try to do in Government, therefore, are those things that we can’t in the Government’s scientific offices-those things that, for whatever reason, are so specific to Government’s needs that it is sensible to do the research in Government. Were we only to rely on that, it would be a very impoverished way of looking at our scientific base. Increasingly, what tends to happen is that Government scientific laboratories are in very close contact with people who are in the academic world. There is a very close intellectual relationship and, what’s more, the Government’s scientific laboratories themselves contract out to the academic world and to the research councils for certain work to be done. It is very hard, in the end, to separate these things from each other. They constitute a mosaic.

Q406 Stephen Metcalfe: You are very happy with the arrangement as it is at the moment-that if an issue does come up there is the ability to fund that research?

Baroness Neville-Jones: We would always like more money.

Q407 Stephen Metcalfe: I realise that. That was a stupid question.

Mr Willetts: I am normally less subtle than that in my ways of putting it.

Baroness Neville-Jones: Resources aside, I think the methodology has been developed, and the degree of contact that takes place between the two. I know some people think that the British Government is still not good at reaching out to the academic and the scientific world, and one does hear that view expressed. All I can say is two things. One is that it is an awful lot better than it used to be. Can it go still further? I’ve no doubt. What I do think-this is one of the changes I would say between having previously been in government and now-is that people are very much more aware of, in a sense, how little Government knows, and how much others do need to contribute. You don’t operate just on the basis of Government information. I think there is a real change in outlook and attitude and that goes from top to bottom, too.

Q408 Stephen Metcalfe: Let me focus, finally, on the cyber-security issue. I think that is something that is rising up the agenda fairly quickly. Do you feel that we need to develop more capacity across Government-across all Departments perhaps-to understand that better and the science of that, and perhaps with specific focus on the social and behavioural sciences? Do you think that that is an area where we are perhaps lacking at the moment?

Baroness Neville-Jones: Yes, I would say that’s true because I think Government is a reflection of the nation. That is a national issue. We need much greater awareness and it should take at least two forms. One is that we need to upskill our population. Things like Get Safe Online are very important parts of educating the so-called 80%. I think that knowledge and a more sophisticated understanding of this subject also need to penetrate more deeply. Everybody is aware of its importance, but do they really understand it? I suspect there is more to be done there. Can we do that with the development of the security strategy and things? Yes, I think that will be a contribution. Is it going to be something that we need to develop over a period of time? I’ve no doubt about that. There is the national issue, and what is going to be an important part of this is increasing the profile-David may want to contribute on this-in our universities to the profile given to qualifications in this area and, indeed, the way in which the public sector and universities invest in cyber-skills.

Mr Willetts: The Office of Cyber Security & Information Assurance is actually working now on a cyber-security R&D programme. That will both be involving activity within Government and also will feed into some of the research council commissioning. If I may say so, I very much agreed with your final point that this is not simply a matter of the physical sciences. So many of these policy areas ultimately become matters of human behaviour. The social sciences, even the humanities, have a role here. As we allocate money between the different research councils, we have to remember that no one discipline has all the answers.

Baroness Neville-Jones: The human factor is extraordinarily important. Look at airport security. The human factor is very important.

Q409 Chair: On several occasions you have suggested that there needs to be more openness and more collaboration between the traditional agencies that protect us from electronic attacks and so on, and the private sector. It brought to mind the section in Simon Singh’s book, The Code Book: The Secret History of Codes and Code-breaking, where he argues that the algorithms that were necessary to create the business RSL were first established in Cheltenham. Do you envisage a change that is so radical that it will have the commercialisation of products, working in partnership with the private sector, or do you still see that traditional barrier occurring?

Baroness Neville-Jones: You are taking me on to ground, Chairman, that we are thinking about. There are many ways of tackling the whole question of whether, for instance, if Cheltenham were to supply a service to the private sector how that might be funded and what the financial relationship might be. If you’ll forgive me, I don’t terribly want to go very far. There are a number of options. It’s a live issue, I would say.

Q410 Chair: If RSL had been created in the UK then you would have a bit more money to spend.

Baroness Neville-Jones: All of the above, yes.

Q411 Chair: In terms of structures, should the Government Office for Science be in the Cabinet Office? Would that create a better relationship?

Mr Willetts: It has been located in various places over the years. I don’t think there is any ideal location. All I can say is that we are very comfortable with the current arrangement. The Prime Minister took a very clear view when the coalition Government came into office that he wasn’t going to divert his energies into reorganising Whitehall. As we do have within BIS responsibility for the science budget in research councils and universities, there is certainly a very strong logic to having the Government Office based in BIS. Of course, Sir John is not a conventional part of the BIS machine. He is a resource for Government as a whole. He is, I know, in the service of the Cabinet Office machine and No. 10, so he is not there as a conventional BIS official, but it is fair to say that we are all very happy to have that operation based there because it does help, given that we at least have by far the biggest science budget.

Q412 Graham Stringer: Having looked at the swine flu pandemic and the volcanic event earlier this year, is there anything that you have learnt from that that you would apply to emergencies in the future or the application of scientific advice to emergencies in the future?

Mr Willetts: I think there are some lessons actually, and perhaps this Committee’s investigation will help us learn the lessons because it is clearly something in process. I mentioned earlier that there is one specific issue, for example, about funding, which we are having to sort out afterwards. The scientific community has been heroic in people just turning up and providing advice for free, but there comes a point, as an emergency runs on, that you are affecting their ability to do other work and you do need to have some mechanism for reimbursing them. We recognise-this may have been something you were discussing earlier today-that there are a range of uncertainties in science. There is a tension between scientists who give advice across a range, from a best case to a worst case scenario, and we know that it is very easy for the media then to pick up on the worst case and the political process to be driven absolutely by the worst case rather than the range of risks. Communicating the intrinsic uncertainties in scientific advice is something that we probably need to do better.

Chair: We thank you for your attendance this morning. Some of the issues we have discussed are clearly going to be of interest to the House in terms of future inquiries, particularly as some of the thinking unfolds on cyber-security issues, because there are some very important subjects just below the surface there that go beyond the scope of our current inquiry. I am sure we will want to keep in touch with you, Baroness Neville-Jones. Thank you for your attendance. Thank you, again, David Willetts, for your attendance.