Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies

SAGE consists of around 20 participants at any one given time.[4] 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, Public Health England and the Chief Scientific Advisers to government departments.[4] 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.[5] Only the Chief Scientific Adviser and Chief Medical Officer may speak on behalf of SAGE.[4]

The UK Government is currently undergoing a review of the structure in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic.[4]

SAGE has advised the government on a number of events, including:[1]

• the 2009 flu pandemic
• the 2010 eruptions of Eyjafjallajökull
• the 2011 Fukushima nuclear accident
• the 2013–14 United Kingdom winter floods
• the 2014 Ebola outbreak
• the 2015 Nepal earthquake
• the 2015–16 Zika virus epidemic
• the potential catastrophic breach of Toddbrook Reservoir in 2019
• the COVID-19 pandemic

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.[6] It was reported that Dominic Cummings and Ben Warner had attended COVID-19 meetings. Their attendance and participation was widely criticised,[7] in particular by other attendees "shocked, concerned and worried for the impartiality of advice".[8]

Early in the pandemic, SAGE was criticised for a lack of transparency.[9] 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 may, and many did, reveal their own membership.[6] 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".[10] Patrick Vallance argued in a letter to Parliament that scientists were protected by the anonymity from "lobbying and other forms of unwanted influence".[9] Membership of SAGE and its subcommittees was then later published on 4 May 2020.[11]

A report in The Guardian stated that attendees at an April 2020 meeting of the group included:[12]

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.[9]

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.[14] 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".[8]

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.[18] Although disagreement is not preferable, this may ultimately lead to potentially irrational decision-making as counter views are not encouraged.[18]

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.[19]

The questions raised about the transparency of SAGE[9] and possible political interference[13][7] 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".[20][21] Later that month, Independent SAGE warned against ending lock-down prematurely in places like schools.[21]

• Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI)
• New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group (NERVTAG)
• Advisory Committee on Dangerous Pathogens (ACDP)

• Official website