The UK government's interim response to the BSE inquiry (also known as the Phillips report) indicates its determination to subordinate further the role of scientists and the civil service to the authority of the New Labour elite.
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In its first formal response to the 17-volume report of the inquiry into the BSE crisis, published in October 2000, the UK government condemns the 'culture of secrecy in Whitehall'. Ministers and civil servants are criticised for a lack of openness about BSE in the late 1980s, and for their complacency about the danger of the disease spreading to humans. It demands major changes in the behaviour of senior civil servants and proposes further training to achieve this.
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No doubt the personnel of the UK state machine could be charged with complicity in many unsavoury episodes in the years of Tory rule - from the wars in the Falklands and the Gulf to the covert operations in Northern Ireland and the miners' strike. Yet its senior functionaries have been called before New Labour's equivalent of the Nuremberg tribunal to answer a strange set of charges over BSE.
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They desired to avoid a health scare; they played down suggestions of a risk to human health; they were concerned to protect the interests of the farming and food industries. They must now be trained in the principles of New Labour's modernised governance: never miss an opportunity to promote a health scare; always encourage risk awareness; and remember that farmers are all Tory voters (and probably foxhunters to boot).
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While civil servants are denigrated, alternative sources of authority are elevated. These include public inquiries under distinguished peers like Lord Phillips and newly appointed bodies such as the Food Standards Agency, whose proceedings are said to be transparent. Though these agencies are depicted as being more democratic and open, in fact they are directly appointed by the UK government and are thus even less accountable to the public than politicians.
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 | | The response to the BSE crisis has been an increased hostility to experimentation |
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Another theme of both the Phillips report and the government's response is the denigration of scientific expertise. This is also presented in a radical populist manner, partly through the symbolic elevation of families of victims of variant CJD as authorities on a par with scientific experts, and partly through the notion that the role of government is simply to present scientific information to members of the public, so that they can make an 'informed choice'. The key device that provides a link between scientists and the public is the 'precautionary principle'.
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The precautionary principle expresses the conviction that scientific innovation should be restrained because of the complexity and fragility of the natural world. It has been particularly reinforced by the BSE crisis because most scientists did not anticipate the epidemic in cattle and still less the apparent crossover of the infection to humans in the form of variant CJD. (It is, however, worth noting how rapidly the scientists caught up with the problem: there has not been a new case of BSE in the UK since 1996 and the incidence of variant CJD remains very low. Nevertheless, scientists have become even more cautious and pessimistic and reluctant to dismiss even the most hypothetical risk, such as that from mobile phones.)
On the other hand, the precautionary principle has a considerable popular resonance when people feel insecure about change and are particularly fearful of scientific advances.
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A heightened awareness of risk and an increased hostility to experimentation are the key features of the outlook fostered by the government's response to the BSE crisis. While it postures as radical and democratic, this outlook invites a more authoritarian style of government over a more fatalistic, nervous society.
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Dr Michael Fitzpatrick is the author of MMR and Autism, Routledge, 2004 (buy this book from Amazon (UK) or Amazon (USA)); and The Tyranny of Health: Doctors and the Regulation of Lifestyle, Routledge, 2000 (buy this book from Amazon UK or Amazon USA). He is also a contributor to Alternative Medicine: Should We Swallow It? Hodder Murray, 2002 (buy this book from Amazon (UK) or Amazon (USA)).
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