A State of Fear: How the UK government weaponised fear during the Covid-19 pandemic

by Laura Dodsworth

  SUSAN, 15, BY HER GRANDMOTHER

  Our granddaughter, Susan, lives with us. We are her guardians. When she realised her mum wouldn’t be able to visit her, she got very upset about it. She started harming herself. She would get a sharp object and puts scores on her arms and legs.

  It was very difficult to get her out of her bedroom in lockdown, even into the garden. She became like a hermit. I think she was probably depressed. It was very difficult. She’s doing GCSEs and it affected her school work too. She was upset about not seeing her mum and friends and she didn’t do any work.

  Her and her brother facetimed their mum, but it was really hard. Once we could be in a bubble with her mum it got better. She’s also much happier now she is back at school. She has been having counselling at school.

  Being inside all the time and self-harming… What were we doing? Looking back, were the rules necessary? I feel really sad and angry. Maybe at the beginning it made sense, but the longer it went on, no.

  Susan’s mum will stay with us at Christmas, whatever the rules are, to make sure she doesn’t self-harm. I think her mum should be able to come over whenever. These days I say ‘Sod the rules.’

  5. THE BUSINESS OF FEAR AND THE UNELECTED PSYCHOCRATS

  ‘If we understand the mechanisms and motives of the group mind, it is now possible to control and regiment the masses according to our will without their knowing it. In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind.’

  From Propaganda by Edward Bernays

  Nudge theory is the concept in behavioural science which uses insights about our behaviour to ‘nudge’ our decision-making. Nudges are not mandates: they are subtle suggestions, and they happen without you even being aware.

  We don’t always make decisions rationally; we simply don’t have time to evaluate each decision we make carefully. If you understand the psychological drivers beneath the surface thinking, you can positively influence people’s decisions and behaviour.

  The person who coined the term ‘nudge’, Cass Sunstein, said, ‘By knowing how people think, we can make it easier for them to choose what is best for them, their families and society.’ Isn’t it great that there are people who know what is best for you? And who can change your thinking and behaviour without you even being aware of it? Rest assured, there are many behavioural scientists and their advocates embedded and advising within the UK government, nudging you towards what is best for you.

  Britain is one of the pioneers in nudge theory. The Behavioural Insights Team (BIT), unofficially known as ‘the Nudge Unit’ was set up in 2010 under David Cameron’s government. Britain is so good at behavioural insights that we export it all over the world. The Nudge Unit is now a profit-making ‘social purpose limited company’ with offices in London, Manchester, Paris, New York, Singapore, Sydney, Wellington and Toronto. It has run more than 750 projects and in 2019 alone worked in 31 countries. It has conducted over 1,000 workshops for governments around the world, training 20,000 civil servants in behavioural insights.

  Essentially, Britain is teaching governments around the world how to follow its model of nudging citizens into doing what is ‘best’ for them. Nudge has become a big business and it’s still growing. In the autumn of 2020, I noticed 10 new behavioural science roles advertised in the NHS and Public Health England.

  I wanted to interview the founder of the Nudge Unit, David Halpern. I sent an email via the Behavioural Insights Team website to explain I wanted to discuss the use of fear to influence behaviour and encourage compliance during the Covid epidemic. Richard O’Brien, the Head of Communications, replied to me to emphasise that the unit is ‘operationally and legally separate’ from the government, but he said he was a great admirer of my work and would like to build a connection with me. We spoke on the phone and he told me that discussing the use of behavioural science and the use of fear during the epidemic was not ‘something David or BIT could comment on’.

  I was disappointed by the lack of engagement and transparency. If not the behavioural scientists at the Nudge Unit, then who would comment on the government’s use of behavioural science? It was all a bit cloak and dagger. There was also something irregular about our exchange. Richard suggested I might be able to work with BIT on a creative project to showcase their work. I asked him to tell me more and send me a brief so we could talk further, but stressed that it must be kept separate from the questions I wanted to ask him at that point. However, after a dazzle of compliments (he was ‘impressed’, ‘flattered’ and an ‘admirer’) there were no further details and no brief to pitch for. More to the point, I never got that interview.

  Could the offer of work, and therefore a fee, have been a ploy to distract me? Had the project materialised, and if I agreed to undertake it, it could have compromised an interview. He must have known that. I wondered though if I had become too cynical? Was I peering so far up the magician’s cloak sleeve that I couldn’t enjoy the magic held in front of me? I checked in with a couple of trusted contacts to ask their opinion.

  I described the exchange to Gary Sidley, a retired consultant clinical psychologist. He chuckled drily, and said, ‘It sounds like a way of neutralising you. A classic tactic is to neutralise an opponent by being seen to collaborate.’ I also spoke to an anonymous scientific advisor deeply embedded in Whitehall. They told me that flattery is a very common tactic used by the government when people ask difficult questions. This echoed my suspicious gut feeling.

  Even without talking to the nudgers, we know a lot about what they do and how they work. A 2018 document, Improving people’s health: Applying behavioural and social sciences to improve population health and wellbeing in England1 has the laudable aims of addressing ‘the problems currently impacting on population health, such as smoking, poor diet and physical inactivity’. The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) launched DHSC Collaborate in 2018 to deploy behavioural science to these ends. The document gives case studies like reducing tobacco use and smoking-related diseases.

  It’s hard to argue with the value of some of these campaigns, although it has caused political controversy for years. Back in 2015, Claire Fox, Director of the Institute of Ideas, which campaigns for free speech and debate, said: ‘Nudge theory is about denying certain choices or making other choices harder. It is used to avoid having arguments and instead to manipulate people without them realising. It is a real assault on people’s capacity to make up their own minds. It treats us like mice in a laboratory. If people don’t do something, it’s not because they are incapable of doing it. It’s because they have chosen not to.’2

  A key difference is that until 2020, the health conditions that the NHS and Public Health England have wanted to target have been well understood, whereas a novel virus is less well understood. The result is that the use of behavioural psychology to encourage compliance during the Covid epidemic could have been heavy-handed if the dangers of the virus were over-estimated, and if its transmission was not fully understood. Also, creating fear and appealing to fear is far more serious than other uses of behavioural psychology. Perhaps because the DHSC’s goals in 2018 seemed noble and sensible, and the methods seemed harmless, this blueprint didn’t contain any discussion of the ethics of using tools which affect us subconsciously.

  In 2010, the authors of MINDSPACE: Influencing behaviour through public policy3 at the Institute of Government, a think tank, included a whole chapter on the ‘legitimacy of government involvement in behaviour change’ because they know it is ‘controversial’. Although they say that ‘public acceptability’ should not be the determining condition for going forward with behaviour change, they acknowledge that the use of behavioural science ‘has implications for consent and freedom of choice’ and offers people ‘little
opportunity to opt out’.

  As such, the report conceded that ‘policy-makers wishing to use these tools… need the approval of the public to do so.’ Yet to date, the public has not been consulted nor formally given approval. A review4 of Halpern’s book, Inside the Nudge Unit, postulated that nudge implies a ‘sanguine acceptance of a technique of government that has manipulation and even deception as a prominent feature’. Making no bones about it, nudge is clever people in government making sure the not-so-clever people do what they want.

  A 2010 House of Lords Science and Technology Select Committee report, Behaviour Change,5 also brought up issues of ‘ethical acceptability’, concluding that the proportionality of the intervention, intrusiveness, restriction of freedom and transparency were the key considerations. In all the exercises of pandemic preparedness in the past, why wasn’t the ethical use of behavioural psychology considered and the public consulted?

  Paternalistic policies are presented as being in our best interests. Behavioural economics assumes that we are not rational, that we know this, and we welcome the release from anxiety and guilt. According to the select committee report, when the government guides our decisions for us it ‘acts as surrogate willpower and locks our biscuit tins’. Locking up biscuit tins is bossy and patronising. Rationally I know I ‘shouldn’t’ eat too many biscuits – or whatever public health issue you would like to insert into that metaphor – but it is my choice. And I would argue that people should be given factual information to guide choices rather than being manipulated at a subconscious level into making choices the government thinks are best for us. But locking us up is a serious measure with vast repercussions. The behavioural science framework for making the population comply with being locked down involved powerful techniques which deserve public consultation. That the consultation hasn’t happened so far is concerning, but now, more than ever, the use of propaganda and nudge needs to be brought into the public forum for debate.

  Gary Sidley was one of the few psychologists I noticed airing concerns about the ethics of behavioural science during the Covid epidemic. He was keen to stress that ‘covert strategies are interesting and they have a role. For instance, if you can try and minimise the likelihood of vandalism, that seems like it would be a legitimate use.’ His concern was that there has been no public consultation about the acceptability of the tools, and they were too contentious for such a major public health policy: ‘Using fear, public pressure and scapegoating are probably tools that would be rejected by the British public if we had a vote.’

  He told me that none of us are immune to the bombardment of fear. He worried about the continued use of these tactics for his children and grandchildren. I asked where he thought it would take us and he said: ‘I don’t want to think about that really. It’s not a good place. There is something distinctive about using fear to get people to conform which is so distasteful and ethically unacceptable. Fear impacts on every aspect of our being.’

  Not all this fear came from the Behavioural Insights Team; there are other actors. As the Nudge Unit wouldn’t speak to me I can’t pretend I know its role in detail, but I assume it was a key contributor, given it is central to UK government, and that David Halpern is part of SPI-B, the Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Behaviour which reports into SAGE, the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies. Controlling information, countering disinformation, using behavioural psychology and leveraging fear can be wrought by different parts of the government machinery: the Cabinet Office, the Rapid Response Unit, the Counter Disinformation Cell, GCHQ, the Home Office’s Research, Information and Communications Unit (RICU), Prevent and the 77th Brigade, which is part of the army. (An explanation of the units is below.)

  I spoke to an independent scientific advisor, deeply embedded at Whitehall, who needs to remain anonymous. I interviewed them about pandemic planning and death registrations (for Chapter 11, ‘Counting the dead’) but was struck by their anger about the government’s use of behavioural psychology. Indeed, it’s one of the reasons they wanted to help me with my research. They told me that they are ‘stunned by the weaponisation of behavioural psychology over the last five years’ and that ‘psychology and behavioural science are feted above everything else. The psychologists didn’t seem to notice when it stopped being altruistic and became manipulative. They have too much power and it intoxicates them.’

  The advisor told me that in their experience, the application of behavioural science in disaster planning used to be more about predicting how people would behave and what they would need, but became more about ‘how to make people do what we want’. Essentially, it became about manipulation, ‘spin’ and ‘disaster management for the social media age’.

  Off the record we talked about the use of propaganda, not just creating fear, but also shaping positive responses after disasters, and steering ‘radicals’ in different directions. Government units are created entirely for these purposes and their methods are opaque. ‘I never used to be cynical,’ my anonymous source told me, ‘you couldn’t find a more positive person. Now if I see a cute seven-year-old in the news, I wonder which government department is behind it.’

  In the advisor’s opinion, ‘Everything about the government messaging this year has been designed to keep the fear going. The story about a Kawasaki-like disease in children, for example.’ Funnily enough, I had noticed the story about a potential link between Kawasaki disease in children, which broke on the BBC6 the same day as a story about Ofsted saying children should return to school.7 At the time, incidences of Kawasaki disease were lower than normal for that time of year,8 probably because children were at home and not catching as many viruses. That context was not part of the dramatic articles about Kawasaki, which lit up social media with alarm. I mused it was odd that two such conflicting stories were in the news on the same day, although of course the news fell in a fast flurry around us all year. But could this push–pull be designed to create confusion? Or were the media and their sources struggling to keep up with confusing and conflicting stories? My source said stories are leaked to the media to help push certain narratives forward.

  Another example of that was an article in The Independent which ran in February 2021 with the headline ‘Hospitals prepare for increase in children suffering rare disease triggered by Covid’.9 This came out just when the clamour for schools to open was increasing. Honestly, it was a bit of a non-story. Even the sub-heading explained ‘Covid-19 triggers inflammatory response in very small minority of children, most of whom will not be seriously affected.’ In fact, at this time, more young people were being admitted to hospital with mental health problems than all medical conditions, let alone Covid.10

  The anonymous scientific advisor said that there had been conversations about the use of fear. It was felt that the fear of death could be leveraged to make people follow the rules. While this source was party to confidential conversations, the idea that the government should weaponise our fear is fact: we know that the idea was officially put forward and minuted as part of the SPI-B recommendations.

  Similar tactics were employed in other countries. In Canada, the Toronto Star11 reported that Ottawa’s behavioural science ‘nudge unit’ was mostly operating ‘under the radar’ producing campaigns to gain compliance with public health measures, helping politicians with their speeches and collecting data. The article accurately observed that a ‘massive social-science experiment that has taken place over the planet’ had ‘given government important clues on how to modify citizens’ behaviour for other big global issues – such as climate change, for instance’.

  Jacinda Ardern made an embarrassing slip of the tongue when she referred to ‘a two-week period of sustained propaganda’ that New Zealanders who completed the government’s Managed Isolation were subjected to. Devastating truth, or inconsequential misuse of the word? As Stuff observed, ‘under this slip of the usually very polished tongue is a truth: the Ardern Government has, in fact, been delivering a masterclass in
propaganda since Covid began. It has presented the plan that it formulated as the only feasible option, set up rules and language to prosecute that agenda and rhetorically crushed all opposition.’12

  Gript13 reported that leaked docments showed that the Irish ‘Zero Covid’ advocacy group ISAG (Independent Scientific Advocacy Group) was instructed to ‘look for ways to increase insecurity, anxiety, and uncertainty’, and to ‘go after people and not institutions’ because ‘people hurt faster than institutions’. ISAG members, many of whom are regular guests in Irish media, were told that they could count on ‘imagination’ to ‘dream up’ many more consequences’ as ‘the threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself.’ Although ISAG is made up of independent scientists and doesn’t represent a government, these leaks reveal the tactics resorted to by the same type of academics who do populate government advisory panels.

  The country with the most striking story was Germany. Leaked documents from the Ministry of the Interior showed that scientists were hired to produce a worst-case scenario in order to justify restrictions on society. Welt am Sonntag14 broke the story of how leading scientists from various research institutes and universities collaborated with management at the ministry to create a computational model to ‘get ahead of the situation mentally and in terms of planning’, which was to help plan further ‘measures of a preventive and repressive nature’. The State Secretary, Markus Kerber, drew a dystopian picture: it was about ‘maintaining internal security and the stability of public order in Germany’. Kerber wrote ‘without bureaucracy, maximum courage’ in his emails. For ‘without bureaucracy’ you could substitute ‘without honesty’ or ‘without scientific rigour’.

  The scenario paper itself was more damning than the UK’s SPI-B paper, which was comparably freer of the dirty details. It said that to create the desired ‘shock effect’, the specific effects of an infection on human society must be made clear. Here are two of its astonishing suggestions: