The latest Covid Inquiry evidence exposes the damage caused by poor government information sharing

We knew well before the pandemic that secrecy between departments during times of crisis rarely serves the public’s interest. The first few weeks of hearings for module nine of the Covid inquiry, on the economic response, have shown the extent to which siloed thinking, deliberate obfuscation and failure to share critical information across departments – particularly outside of the Treasury – harmed the government’s ability to act.

It became clear early in 2020 that the pandemic would have a severe impact on the economy as well as on public health. But, as we argued in our recent report, on combined epidemiological and economic modelling, and as the Institute has argued previously, the government did not join up its thinking to connect the health and economic implications of a pandemic of this scale and its mitigations.

The government must join-up its process more

We argue in our recent report that decision making should be informed jointly by economic and health perspectives and these should be shared inside government at the highest level. It is corrosive to good decision making if different parts of government try to ‘have the ear’ of the prime minister, fighting for attention and whispering like courtiers rather than sharing with each other their analysis, including the evidence base and assumptions behind it.

Frustratingly, intrigue and conflict seem to have been too common during the covid pandemic, based on what has emerged in hearings so far around the Treasury’s use of epi-econ models and economic modelling more generally. Robert Harrison, the Director General for Analysis in the Covid-19 taskforce in the Cabinet Office, told the inquiry on 27 November that the Treasury’s use of and analysis derived from its own internal economic modelling was not as transparent as the approach taken in the epidemiological community. 

He states, “my reference point was the transparency that operated in the epidemiological modelling community… I thought it was a very high standard of transparency and I did not see any comparable process with economic modelling where we often – or I often struggled to get hold of the modelling itself, and the methodology behind it, and relied on conclusions which were presented to me by colleagues in the Treasury.” ⁷ https://covid19.public-inquiry.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/27170929/Transcript-of-Module-9-Public-Hearing-on-27-November-2025.pdf, pp.33-36.  

Speakers at the inquiry pointed to a lack of trust and expertise within government

Harrison told the inquiry that he was unaware of the existence of an epi-macro model developed inside the Treasury in 2020. The Treasury’s own written evidence confirms that such a thing existed, explaining it was used to advise the chancellor. It is unclear to what extent it was used to inform Treasury policy, though the department’s written statement indicates it was used to evaluate social distancing policies at the very least. ⁸ https://covid19.public-inquiry.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/27170924/INQ000588226_009_095.pdf   

James Benford, the Director of the Economics Group and Head of the Analysis Profession at the Treasury from November 2020 to February 2023, explained in his evidence that a firm decision had been taken not to share the model’s existence outside the department. As such, it was never seen or quality assessed by the expert community. He explained that the Treasury was not confident in the strength of the modelling and worried it would become a distraction. Benford indicated that this decision was based on the department’s scarring experience of the Brexit period, where public criticism of Treasury analysis had created a more guarded approach to sharing.  

Whatever the Treasury’s own internal logic for not sharing the existence of the model, it points to a deeply damaging lack of trust between departments that it did not share this modelling with others in government, even in strict confidence. 
Much ink has been spilled at the Institute for Government on the importance of proper cross-government join up in ‘peacetime’. During times of crisis, it is especially important that extra systems are in place to get around the usual departmental siloes and to guard, in particular, against the Treasury’s tendency towards secrecy.

Changes should be made in ‘peacetime’ to prepare for the next crisis

To facilitate a better response in the future, the government needs to be thinking now about how it can better link up its science and economic advice. In any future major pandemic, outputs from different models, bringing together both economic and epidemiological insights, must be synthesised into a consensus view by experts who understand the methods, with insights conveyed clearly to all ministers and departments.

To achieve this, the government needs to build capacity in the centre to access, synthesise and share insights from combined economic and epidemiological analysis. These analyses cannot simply happen in siloes. The government should establish a standing network of external epi-econ researchers (jointly overseen by the Treasury and UKHSA), in much the same way that happened with epidemiologists during covid through the SPI-M group. It should also create formal structures ahead of pandemics, with cross-government support and epidemiological and economic representation to validate models, produce consensus insights, and feed them into crisis response decision-making in the COBR unit.

These actions are the start but not the end of good government planning for a future pandemic. As the government hopefully internalises lessons from the national inquiry and a recent pandemic simulation exercise, work must begin to break down the secrecy and siloes that caused such problems during the Covid crisis.