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Cummings row risks breach of public trust, says psychology expert

<span>Photograph: Tolga Akmen/AFP/Getty Images</span>
Photograph: Tolga Akmen/AFP/Getty Images

Scientists advising the government on how to persuade people to follow coronavirus guidance say the furore over Dominic Cummings’ movements during lockdown risks a damaging breach of public trust.

Members of Spi-B, the advisory group on behavioural science, say their recommendations to set very clear and unequivocal messages for the public to follow have frequently been ignored by politicians. They fear Cummings’ apparent disregard of the rules will be extremely damaging.

“Those of us on Spi-B have been increasingly concerned about the extent to which the government’s approach to the behavioural sciences and the messaging, particularly, has been at 180 degrees from the kind of advice that we have been sending into the Cabinet Office,” said Robert West, a professor of health psychology at University College London’s Institute of Epidemiology and Health.

He noted that ministers got a lot of flak for changing the advisory slogan from “stay at home” to “stay alert” as they began to talk of easing the lockdown. “And rightly so, because it is exactly the kind of thing that you would have hoped they would have consulted with their scientific advisers on, in order to come up with something that would be meaningful at a really important stage of the process.”

West said Spi-B was never asked about the change of slogan. “The sense is that there’s another parallel group of people who are effectively calling the shots here and have their own views on how things should go, but they are not necessarily experts in communication or behavioural science or all the things they would need to be.

“They are treating the whole health crisis as though it were a political crisis. If it’s a political crisis, what you do is try to manage your reputation. If it’s a health crisis you focus on saving lives, at whatever cost to your political reputation.”

He said 40 people were involved in Spi-B, the Independent Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Behaviours, which feeds in to Sage, the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies.

“I know [concern] is widespread among the group but not everybody feels comfortable speaking out and I completely understand that. But there has been considerable and growing unease,” West said. “The worry is that the government has said from the beginning it is following the science, and that was never true.”

The group did not expect to be calling the shots, he said, “but when the government forms policy or does something that goes against the advice, they need to explain why”.

He said the Cabinet Office asked the committee to provide guidance and write papers to answer questions posed by the government, sometimes at two hours’ notice. The members were working extremely hard, he said. “Then it seems to go into a black hole and we see communications that are at variance [with the advice].”

He expressed sympathy for Chris Whitty and Patrick Vallance, the chief medical officer for England and the chief scientific officer, who he said were “potentially in such a difficult position” attempting to champion the science with the government.