Treasury accused of ‘pure dogma’ by Patrick Vallance in pandemic notes

For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Please try again later {{ /verifyErrors }} Sir Patrick Vallance criticised the Treasury in private notes written during the pandemic, accusing it of “pure dogma”. “No evidence, no transparency, pure dogma and wrong throughout.” When questioned on the comments, Sir Patrick said: “I did think there was a lack of transparency on the economic side and it was difficult to know exactly what modelling had been done, and what input there had been to various assertions and comments made.” Andrew O’Connor KC, counsel to the inquiry, referred to evidence provided earlier this month by Ben Warner, a data scientist and a key ally of Dominic Cummings who worked in Government at the time. Sir Patrick agreed that a lack of transparency on the economic analysis informing decisions “made it very difficult”. There was little evidence that economists had understood that rising infections alone were enough to cause problems for the economy and a lot of emphasis on why interventions were negative for the economy Sir Patrick Vallance “I did try to suggest that an economic advice group similar to Sage was set up and, indeed, had one meeting but it wasn’t pursued.” Sir Patrick was asked whether there was a “deficiency” in economic advice as well as a problem with the public perception of how decisions were taken.