Just attended an online Covid briefing with Sir Patrick Vallance, Chris Whitty &c. Only MPs and peers - almost 450 of us. Questions were uniformly concise, courteous, pertinent, well-informed and non-political: better on each count than we usually hear at press conferences. /1
Lots of fair challenges, esp on messaging. How can omicron be "doubling daily" when figures look stable? Publish staff absence rates, given it's a crucial issue? Map vaxed/non-vaxed hospital cases against vaxed/non-vaxed numbers in each age cohort, to make the case for vax? /2
Parliamentarians are right to push these points on behalf of an engaged and intelligent public - the scientists benefit, even when they have answers, and MPs can use what they learn to inform constituents and hold government effectively to account. /3
The interplay between experts and our elected representatives (some impressive peers too) was democracy at work. Everyone there learned from it. I wish the public could have watched (but perhaps some politicians might then have felt the need to be more "political"). /4
It's a view rarely expressed, except in the period just after an MP has been attacked or killed while serving the public - but for the most part and on tonight's showing we remain very fortunate in the quality of our elected representatives. /5
Having attended these events both irl and virtually, I would add, finally, that the latter was on every measure preferable. I hope both Houses of Parliament continue to run with the advances of the past two years: the tech is good, and only going to get better. /6
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