On Friday, The Guardian revealed that Boris Johnson’s Chief Political Adviser, Dominic Cummings, is a part of the secret scientific panel advising the UK government on the coronavirus pandemic. Ben Warner, a data scientist who worked with Cummings on the Vote Leave campaign for Brexit, was also present at the meetings of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage). The involvement of Cummings and Warner in Sage has raised huge concerns over the impartiality of the scientific process.

The Labour Party has since urged the government to ban all political advisers from attending Sage. Jonathan Ashworth told BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme that Cummings was “a political adviser, not a medical or scientific expert.” The Shadow Health Secretary went on to say that if the public are to have confidence in Sage, the government must make clear Dominic Cummings can no longer participate or attend its meetings.

The involvement of political advisers in the scientific process casts huge doubts over its impartiality. Ben Warner’s connections to Downing Street are also clear. His brother, Marc, is CEO of the artificial intelligence company Faculty, previously Advanced Skills Initiative (ASI), which also worked for the Leave campaign. Vote Leave declared in 2016 that they paid the then ASI £72,081 for “advertising and market research” but the actual amount on the invoices was £114,881. What this “advertising and market research” entailed is still largely unknown. Now, the rebranded Faculty has won a government contract alongside Palantir to model confidential NHS data in order to track the spread of the coronavirus. Both Ben Warner and his brother have, therefore, transitioned from working on the Vote Leave campaign with Cummings to playing key roles in the government response to the coronavirus pandemic.

Dominic Cummings joined No. 10 in July 2019 as Chief Political Advisor to Prime Minister Boris Johnson. Shortly afterwards, in August 2019, Marc Warner’s company won a £250 million contract with the NHS to build an artificial intelligence lab. It is through this contract, according to the Byline Times, that Faculty won its new contract to model NHS data to track the spread of the coronavirus. Palantir, who is also a part of this new contract, won a $17 million contract in April with the United States Department of Health and Human Services Program Support Center to provide detailed data on the spread of COVID-19. Palantir is owned by Peter Thiel, a right-wing billionaire who is supporting Donald Trump’s campaign for re-election in 2020.

A UK government spokesperson said; “Expert participants often vary for each meeting according to which expertise is required. A number of representatives from government departments and No 10 attend also.” However, Cummings’s and Ben Warner’s political histories should make them exempt from attending Sage, as its sole aim is to assess evidence impartially and then to advise the government based on that evidence. The enormous power Cummings and the Warner brothers now yield over confidential NHS data, as well as the scientific evidence being provided to the government, is extremely concerning.