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The Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) is a British Government body that advises central government in emergencies. It is usually chaired by the United Kingdom's Chief Scientific Adviser. Specialists from academia and industry, along with experts from within government, make up the participation, which will vary depending on the emergency.[1] SAGE gained public prominence for its role in the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic in the United Kingdom.
History
In the aftermath of the United Kingdom BSE outbreak, "the then Government Chief Scientific Adviser (Lord May) published Guidelines on the Use of Scientific Advice in Policy-Making; these have subsequently been revised, most recently in June 2010... The Government [later] developed the Principles of Scientific Advice to Government,[2] which 'set out the rules of engagement between Government and those who provide independent scientific and engineering advice.' The Principles apply to 'Ministers and Government departments, all members of Scientific Advisory Committees and Councils [...] and other independent scientific and engineering advice to Government.' They detail principles related to roles and responsibilities, independence and transparency and openness."[3] The May advice was updated in May 2011 in a document entitled Code of Practice for Scientific Advisory Committees (CoPSAC 2011).[4]
"In an emergency where scientific or technical advice is required to aid the emergency response, the Government may decide that a" SAGE "is required; this decision can either be made by the Lead Government Department (LGD) or the Cabinet Office in consultation with the Government Office for Science. SAGE is usually chaired by the Government Chief Scientific Adviser... Each SAGE is emergency-specific. The swine flu pandemic was the first emergency where the SAGE mechanism was used; volcanic ash was the second."[3]
SAGE has advised the government on a number of events, including:[5]
SAGE was reported in July 2020 to consist of around 20 participants at any one given time.[12] Participants are drawn from both academia and practice, and the participants of a particular meeting are decided upon by the British Government Chief Scientific Adviser and the Chief Medical Officer for England, depending on the expertise required. They are not generally employed by government. They do not operate under government instruction. In addition to these participants, SAGE is also attended by officials from relevant parts of government and arm's-length bodies who may contribute to discussions with relevant expertise, for instance, the UK Health Security Agency and the Chief Scientific Advisers to government departments.[12]
The government does not have to act upon the conclusions of SAGE, and other bodies, including other sources of scientific advice, feed in to government's decisions.[13] Only the Chief Scientific Adviser and Chief Medical Officer may speak on behalf of SAGE.[12]
In 2020, the UK Government carried out a review of SAGE's structure in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic.[12]
Sub-committees can be delegated by SAGE to study particular issues. During the COVID-19 pandemic, these were:[14]
Scientific Pandemic Insights Group on Behaviours (SPI-B)
Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Modelling (SPI-M) and its the Operational sub-group (SPI-M-O); the sub-group was awarded the Weldon Memorial Prize in 2022 for its work in the COVID-19 pandemic[15]
PHE Serology Working Group
COVID-19 Clinical Information Network (CO-CIN)
Environmental Modelling Group (EMG)
Children’s Task and Finish Working Group (TFC)
Hospital Onset COVID-19 Working Group (HOCI)
Ethnicity Subgroup
Social Care Working Group (SCWG)
COVID-19
The 2020 COVID-19 pandemic has seen an expanded role for and greater attention paid to SAGE.
Although not prohibited, until the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, it is believed that political advisors had never attended SAGE meetings in any capacity nor is there evidence for 10 Downing Street officials attending these meetings too.[16] It was reported that Dominic Cummings and Ben Warner had attended COVID-19 meetings. Their attendance and participation was widely criticised,[17] in particular by other attendees "shocked, concerned and worried for the impartiality of advice".[18]
Early in the pandemic, in April 2020, SAGE was criticised for a lack of transparency.[19] For their security and safety, and on advice from the Centre for the Protection of National Infrastructure, the list of current members was not disclosed, although members could, and many did, reveal their own membership.[16]Chris Whitty, speaking to the Health and Social Care Select Committee regarding the COVID-19 meetings of SAGE and the anonymity of its members, said that SAGE was "given quite clear advice from the Centre for the Protection of National Infrastructure, basically based on the fact that SAGE is a sub-committee of COBRA".[20]Patrick Vallance argued in a letter to Parliament that scientists were protected by the anonymity from "lobbying and other forms of unwanted influence".[19]
Membership of SAGE and its subcommittees was published on 4 May 2020.[21] A register of participants' interests was first published in December 2020.[22]
Participants
April 2020
A report in The Guardian stated that attendees at an April 2020 meeting of the group included:[23]
Vallance has written that SAGE includes scientists and experts from more than twenty separate institutions. SAGE also contains four expert groups which may each have as low as five and as many as over forty members.[19]
Dominic Cummings was confirmed by 10 Downing Street to have attended a 23 March meeting, but the government said Cummings was not a member of SAGE.[25] The attendance and participation by Prime Ministerial advisors caused much criticism. It was reported that one participant considered that Cummings' interventions had sometimes inappropriately influenced what is supposed to be an impartial scientific process; another expressed shock when Cummings first began participating in SAGE discussions, in February, viewing this as unwanted political influence on what should be "unadulterated scientific data".[18]
May 2020
In May 2020, Professor Neil Ferguson resigned from SAGE after The Telegraph revealed he had violated lockdown rules to meet with a partner.[26] The same day of his resignation, a list of SAGE participants was published by the UK Government, 4 May 2020.[27] However, it notes that: "Permission to publish names was requested from all participants. Those who did not give permission have not been named." In addition: "These meetings are also regularly attended by officials from Her Majesty’s Government. These attendees have not been named." No reason for the secrecy is provided. Two attendees did not give permission to be named. Attendees as of May 2020 included:[23]
In July 2020, the participants list was updated to reflect recent meetings. Professor Neil Ferguson was featured on the list. As of 19 November, the list remains unchanged and includes:[28]
Sir Patrick Vallance FMedSci FRS, Government Chief Scientific Adviser
Professor Chris Whitty CB FMedSci, Chief Medical Officer (England) and Chief Scientific Adviser, Department of Health and Social Care
Professor Rebecca Allen, University of Oxford
Professor John Aston, Chief Scientific Adviser, Home Office
Professor Charles Bangham Imperial College London
Professor Wendy Barclay FMedSci Imperial College London
Professor Jonathan Benger UWE Bristol
Fliss Bennee, Welsh Government
Mr Allan Bennett, Public Health England
Professor Phil Blythe, Chief Scientific Adviser, Department for Transport
Professor Chris Bonnell, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine
Professor Sir Ian Boyd FRSE, University of St Andrews
Professor Peter Bruce, University of Oxford
Caroline Cake, HDR-UK
Professor Andrew Curran, Chief Scientific Adviser, Health and Safety Executive
Professor Paul Cosford, Public Health England
Dr Gavin Dabrera, Public Health England
Professor Sir Ian Diamond FRSE FBA, National Statistician, Office for National Statistics
Professor Yvonne Doyle CB, Medical Director, Public Health England
An April 2020 article in The Guardian written by Richard Coker cited SAGE as a potential example of "scientific groupthink" in which disagreement and/or conflicting views are minimised to reach a consensus.[30] Although disagreement is not preferable, this may ultimately lead to potentially irrational decision-making as counter views are not encouraged.[30]
On 24 October 2020, The Spectator, while noting that SAGE minutes are published, called for a publication of the data used by SAGE, including NHS occupancy data, that were employed by it to justify the decisions it made. The editors remarked how in France hospital occupancy data were indeed published daily, while they were told by the NHS to submit a Freedom of Information request, which can take up to 28 days.[31]
The questions raised about the transparency of SAGE[19] and possible political interference[24][17] during the COVID-19 pandemic raised concerns about trust in public health messaging by opposition parties and others. As an alternative, a group of scientists created Independent SAGE, chaired by Sir David Anthony King, a former Government Chief Scientific Advisor, in early May 2020 to "provide a clear structure on which an effective policy should be based given the inevitability that the virus will continue to cross borders".[32][33] Later that month, Independent SAGE warned against ending lock-down prematurely in places like schools.[33]
^ ab"Coronavirus can only be beaten if groups such as Sage are transparent and accountable". The Guardian. 27 April 2020. Retrieved 13 October 2020. I like all the people I know on these committees. They are extremely bright. And I believe their values and motivations are "good". But I worry that their intimacy, their familiarity, lends itself to groupthink. Are there sufficient contrarian views? Are critically important assumptions subjected to sufficient critique? Is groupthink acknowledged as a risk, and if so, how is it addressed?
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