Why shouldn’t Dominic Cummings attend science advisers’ coronavirus meetings?

There has been outrage and unease over the PM’s chief adviser, but he’s hardly a unique case, writes Sean O’Grady

Dominic Cummings recommended everyone read Philip Tetlock’s book ‘Superforecasting’ earlier this week (Getty)

Dominic Cummings, officially the prime minister’s chief adviser, semi-official chief misfit and unofficial Svengali, provokes strong feelings. As the man who, arguably, won the EU referendum for Leave, this is inevitable. David Cameron, who experienced his disruptive ways first-hand when Cummings worked for Michael Gove at the education department, called him a serial psychopath. Theresa May banished him from Whitehall. Boris Johnson has embraced him, to the unease of many, even in Tory circles.

So the revelation that this inquisitive, brooding, menacing figure, plus a sidekick named Ben Warner, had been attending meetings of the Scientific Advisory Group on Emergencies (Sage) was bound to cause a stir. The argument runs that he may have had a chilling effect on free discussion, and that full members of Sage – Cummings was only an attendee – found it worrying that he was parked in on their proceedings. The allegation is that Cummings’s interventions sometimes inappropriately influenced what is supposed to be impartial independent advice.

In Cummings’s defence, he and the PM may have been hugely better informed about the pandemic as a result. Indeed the eventual imposition of a partial lock down last month – which has thus far worked – is said to have been down to a “Domescene” moment of realisation when the Sage discussed Imperial College’s terrifying estimates of potential casualty levels.

Does anyone care? Certainly the issue is what Westminster calls “process” rather than substance. While it is true that advisers such as Cummings have rarely if ever attended such specialist committees, that does not necessarily make it a bad thing. Moreover, prime ministerial aides do not have to sit on any particular body to exert influence, benign or otherwise. For example, various enquiries into the lead-up to the Iraq war of 2003 demonstrated how figures such Alastair Campbell and Jonathan Powell interacted with the intelligence apparatus, because of their close relationship with Tony Blair.

Would it be better or worse if Cummings had little or no role in the process of decision-making? Is that even realistic? Prime ministers going back to David Lloyd George have always had their own experts, mavericks, cronies and weirdos populating kitchen cabinets, and all interfering with the formal processes of cabinet government, provoking periodic rows and resignations.

The matter has, though, acquired an additional cloak and dagger aspect because of the spurious attempt to keep the membership of Sage quiet; it is not secret, but it is unpublished. The members such as Chris Whitty, chief medical officer, don’t care who knows they serve on it, but it is not their job to reveal the names. By contrast we know who is on the Cobra group they advise. We also know who is on Nervtag (the New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group) that reports to Sage; but the membership of two other Sage sub-groups is not public. We don’t know who sits on SPI-B, the behavioural science group (Independent Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Behaviours). Nor is it known who is on the SPI-M, the Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Modelling. The policy of naming the shifting membership of these groups is inconsistent, and invites suspicion.

In truth, this alphabet soup of geeks and boffins is probably of little interest to the public – so long as they are getting things right, or leastways more right than wrong. Thus far, and despite some unforgivable failures, the worst case scenarios for Covid-19 have not materialised. The hospitals did not run out of intensive care beds or ventilators, nor were they overwhelmed. A peak of infections and deaths has been passed. For now, who sits on what committee feels like a secondary issue.