Your article on the abolition of Public Health England (Abolition of Pubic Health England just ‘passing the blame for coronavirus mistakes’, 19 August) raises some important questions, but there are others.
Is Dido Harding the best person to lead the nation’s new health protection body? The honest answer is that no one knows, because she was appointed by ministers behind closed doors, not after an open and transparent selection process. We do not know whether the government’s political interest and/or ministers’ personal ones were factors in her selection. This matters.
What matters far more is that all the advice and guidance produced by the new body will be subject to the same uncertainty and doubt, because the body itself is subject to ministerial control and influence. Rather than confidence in its work being reinforced by transparency and scientific peer review, it will be undermined by doubts about its rigour and the extent to which it is subject to political interest.
The importance of basing expert public health advice on science untainted by political interest was highlighted in the Phillips review of the BSE tragedy, so the lessons of history are clear. And we all know what happens to those who ignore them.
The new health protection body should be set up at arm’s length from politicians, and with proper safeguards for the independence of its work, just as the Food Standards Agency was in the wake of BSE.
Justin McCracken
Former chief executive, Health Protection Agency
• Agencies such as PHE, now scrapped and reborn as the National Institute for Health Protection (NIHP), exist to control infections and improve the nation’s health through health-related data collection, research and analysis. There are similar agencies, such as the Centers for Disease Control in the United States, Germany’s Robert Koch Institute, and many others.
All around the world, such agencies are invariably led by expert scientists. The leaders of PHE, since its inception, have been trained in accountancy and administration. The chief executive of the NIHP is a management consultant and a former chief executive of a mobile phone company. We seem to approach infectious disease control from a novel perspective, quite distinct from most other advanced nations.
Dr Aamir Ahmed
King’s College London
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