City mayors and council leaders must be involved in the government’s decision-making on Covid

Editorial: The Northern Research Group wants Downing Street to set out an ‘exit plan’ for areas under tier 3 restrictions – a reasonable request but the group will probably be disappointed

Esther McVey and Jake Berry are putting pressure on the PM (AFP/Getty)

Such is the modern Conservative Party’s taste for factionalism that it boasts a “research group” – agitators in suits, mostly – for almost every occasion. The notorious “Spartans” of the European Research Group were the pioneers, and have now been followed by the China Research Group and the Northern Research Group. There are well-founded rumours that a lockdown-sceptic Covid Research Group will be joining the party before long. It seems to be getting a little out of control.  

At the moment, it is the NRG that is causing trouble, up north and down in Westminster. The group has joined a very loose alliance with the local Labour mayors to pursue economic assistance for those parts of the north moving up the Covid tiers. The NRG’s leader, Jake Berry, helpfully points out that the group’s MPs can represent the prime minister’s Commons majority, and are holding him to his vague promise to “level up” the north of England.  

Though not exclusively (there are traditionally Tory country seats across the north of England), they also represent the strategically important, marginal “blue wall” seats gained from Labour at the December 2019 general election. More than 50 MPs have joined the group, including former ministers David Davis and Esther McVey, unlikely warlords in this nascent Tory civil war.  

Their most recent request is for Downing Street to set out an “exit plan” for areas under tier 3 restrictions to return to something closer to normality. They’d also like the government to make a move on feeding hungry children, but they are hardly alone in that.  

It sounds reasonable enough, given the uncertainties facing hard-pressed families and businesses. It would be something for communities to aim for, in return for their sacrifices in personal freedoms and living standards. It would also be a rare step forward for openness and transparency in decision-making. This time, though, they are likely to be disappointed.  

The problem is that there is no single metric, or even a combination, that can practicably be converted into a semi-automatic threshold for relaxation. What if absolute infection levels are high but the R rate is showing a dramatic decline? Or vice versa? Is a downward trend in the rate of infected people per 100,000 necessarily sustainable if it lasts for a week or a fortnight? What if hospitalisations of the over-60s are shooting up? What is the level of spare capacity in the regional NHS? Are there strong countervailing national and global trends that would neutralise progress made in one town or county?

It would be helpful if the Joint Biosecurity Centre (JBC) published the full range of data it monitors and indicated the kind of criteria that are generally the more important, and ministers should put a list of those factors into the public domain. 

The sensible approach is to leave such technical judgements to the experts in the JBC, which was created for this purpose. With the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies, the JBC advises ministers on the steps to take, giving due weight to all of the evidence. This cannot be done formulaically or by an algorithm. It is right for ministers to make decisions based on that collective expert judgement.

City mayors and council leaders, and indeed regional groups of MPs, have been ignored in the past and must be involved in the decision-making if this advice is to rebuild its authority. Sometimes the experts have to err on the side of caution, especially as test and trace is still so underdeveloped. There can be little certainty about how soon places can emerge from tier 3.

Fortunately, the head of the JBC, Clare Gardiner, has short-circuited much of the argument and speculation with a simple common sense-based assessment of the current situation. She told MPs last week: “If one sets an arbitrary threshold of 150 cases per 100,000 and an area is currently at more than 500 cases per 100,000, it is very unlikely that in four weeks they will cross that lower threshold. That is why one should be looking at the relative stabilisation of rates as opposed to setting specific thresholds.”

Roughly translated, Dr Gardiner is telling the country to be very patient, and to get ready for a digital Christmas.