Theresa Sommer, Sarah Ball and Jessica Pykett
This blog post is based on the Evidence & Policy article, ‘Ethical moments and institutional expertise in UK Government COVID-19 pandemic policy responses: where, when and how is ethical advice sought?’.
The COVID-19 pandemic has posed significant challenges for governments, policy advisors and citizens alike. Wide-reaching and contentious decisions had to be made at a moment’s notice while evidence about the virus was scarce, and at times involved conflicting knowledge claims. Under these conditions of uncertainty and ambiguity, questions have emerged about how values and ethical advice played roles in the decision-making process.
In our Evidence & Policy article, we look beyond the discussion of scientific advice and ask where, when and how ethical advice was sought. The article is based on documentary analysis of policy papers and documents published by UK government advisory committees and a workshop with UK government ethics advisors and researchers. Our analysis focuses on both the temporal and spatial dimensions of ethical advice during the COVID-19 lockdown in the UK. By asking when and how ethical advice was sought, we set out to account for the (changing) role of ethics and point out distinct ethical moments and stages of how ethics were taken into consideration.
We developed an institutional map that includes central advisory bodies and links between these institutions to understand where and how ethical advice was sought to inform decisions such as quarantine measures and regulatory action. This mapping of ethical advisory bodies in the UK shows the ad hoc nature of how official frameworks, ethical advice and communications about ethical policymaking intersect.
Even though there were organisations that provided ethical advice to the government, there appeared to be no consistent co-ordination of expert ethics advice on a national level. The knowledge practices within these institutional arrangements could be characterised by a focus on urgency/speed, a distinction and hierarchy between different types of ethics (biomedical, public health and social ethics), and a complicated and sometimes adversarial engagement with public debate and national media.
In areas of government policy beyond health, such as education, social and labour market policy, there has been limited deliberation on ethical issues during the pandemic. This is despite there being many different ethics experts offering insight, such as the Nuffield Council on Bioethics and the UK Pandemic Ethics Accelerator, to name but two.
Our research shows that singular moments of public outcry were more likely to draw attention to ethical concerns than the advice emerging from such ethics or advocacy bodies. This led to a Covid-19 strategy driven by reactionary responses, rather than a coherent ethical strategy in a time of crisis.
We acknowledge that ethical advice and the inclusion of ethical principles or frameworks will not automatically lead to ‘better’ policymaking, and that all policymaking involves ethical controversies to varying degrees. However, we argue that is essential that we work to better understand how ethical advice can more effectively inform policies and avoid dismissing the value-laden nature of the science-policy interface.
As the UK Covid-19 Inquiry hears evidence on political and administrative decision-making across the UK and devolved governments, these observations provide the basis for a new line of inquiry into understanding how issues become publicly and politically value-laden, and the role of ethical experts in shaping public discourse and policy interventions. We suggest looking more broadly at the institutional settings and cultural understandings of ethical advice to get a more nuanced understanding of the situational and contingent nature of governance in times of crisis.
Theresa Sommer is a research assistant in the working group ‘Political Sociology’ at Bielefeld University. In 2021, she completed her master’s degree in Sociology at Bielefeld University with a master’s thesis on the application of behavioural insights in Germany. Her research interests include the role of science and technology in politics, the use and global expansion of behavioural public policy, and the ethical dimensions of public policy.
Sarah Ball is a lecturer in public policy. She is working on an ARC Linkage Project titled ‘The new digital governance of welfare-to-work’. Prior to this she completed her PhD at the Institute of Social Science Research at the University of Queensland. Her research explored the use of behavioural insights and experimental methods in the development of social policy in the Australian Federal Government. She has worked for both the Australian Public Service Commission and the Department of Social Services, where she developed a deep interest in public administration, knowledge sharing and evidence-based policy.
Jessica Pykett is Professor of Social and Political Geography and Co-Director of the Centre for Urban Wellbeing at the University of Birmingham, UK. She researches how knowledge and expertise about emotions and decision-making are evolving globally and shaping policy. This research explores the spatial and sociodigital nature of these forms of knowledge, and examines the implications of such trends for future wellbeing and societal ethics. She is co-investigator for the ESRC Centre for Sociodigital Futures, and the Leverhulme project, ‘Biology, data science, and the making of precision education’.
Image credit: Photo by Gary Butterfield on Unsplash
Read the original research in Evidence & Policy:
Pykett, J. Ball, S. Dingwall, R. Lepenies, R. Sommer, T. Strassheim, H. and Wenzel, L. (2022). Ethical moments and institutional expertise in UK Government COVID-19 pandemic policy responses: where, when and how is ethical advice sought? Evidence & Policy, 10.1332/174426421X16596928051179. OPEN ACCESS
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