The former Director of Communications to United Kingdom Prime Minister Boris Johnson has blamed Public Servants for the mixed messages the public received during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Lee Cain (pictured) reaffirmed his call for a major shake-up that would result in the Public Service’s communication team being centralised with staff numbers slashed.
In a paper published by the think tank Institute for Government this month (September), Mr Cain said the team of communications professionals based in the Cabinet Office to assist in the crisis “was a failure due to inexperienced staff and unclear lines of responsibility”.
He said policy development was inconsistent and leaking “endemic”.
Mr Cain said the first iteration of the COVID campaign had to be scrapped and restarted with outside expertise and there was no coherent social media campaign or data-visualisation capability in the early days of the pandemic.
“Put starkly, there was nobody with the ability to create slides for the daily press conference — and even when a system was designed, people struggled with the skills required, and slides were often sent only moments before press conferences were due to begin,” Mr Cain said.
“This resulted in the public receiving mixed messages at a critical time, damaging the Government’s COVID response,” he said.
However, Mr Johnson himself has been criticised for mixed messaging throughout the pandemic which included disregarding his Government’s own advice and having to row back on statements that gave citizens false hope.
A Government spokesperson labelled Mr Cain’s claims as misleading.
“Throughout the pandemic we have set out clear, targeted and effective communications to help the public protect themselves, directly preventing millions of infections and saving thousands of lives,” the spokesperson said.
Mr Cain said the system would benefit from “real expertise” in a new, centralised Government Communications Service together with a “dramatic cut” in personnel so that no Department had more than 30 or 40 communications staff.
He served as the Government’s Communications Chief between July 2019 and late 2020, when he resigned following disagreements with influential figures in the ruling Conservative Party, including Mr Johnson’s now wife Carrie Symonds.
London, 1 1 December 2021
