Hello, I'm David Edmonds and this is the Pandemic Ethics Accelerator Podcast.
The UK Pandemic Ethics Accelerator was a project funded by the Arts and Humanities Research
Council in 2021 22 to examine the ethical challenges faced during the COVID pandemic,
it combined expertise from the University of Oxford, Bristol, Edinburgh University College, London and the Nuffield Council on Bioethics.
This six part podcast series covers some of the themes that emerged from the research.
Jamie Webb, welcome. Hi, David. Thank you so much for having me.
We're talking today about trust. We all sort of understand what trust is.
But do you have a handy definition and is trust the same as trustworthiness?
So the first thing to say is that they're distinct concepts.
Trust is a relational attitude. Patient X, trust agent y.
Whereas trustworthiness is a property of agents or indeed institutions, and a trust as an attitude is usually distinguished from reliance.
Suppose a morally thicker notion than the line. So here's a couple of examples.
I relied on my alarm clock to wake me up in the morning, but I wouldn't normally say that I trust it.
And in most philosophical accounts of trust, trust is defined as reliance.
Plus, something else obviously does array of accounts of what that kind of something else might be.
But when we talk about trust between agents usually saying, well, if I trust you, I rely on you to do something on certain tasks.
And not only do I rely on you, I think that there's an attitude of investment or goodwill towards me to kind of fill that account out further.
So that's the link between trust and reliance.
Is it central to the idea of trust that someone can let you down or betray you, that that's always a possibility?
Absolutely. I think it's essential to the idea that trust can be betrayed.
And that's in one way what makes it thicker than reliance. And of course, we can be mistaken about our trust relationships.
I might trust someone who is untrustworthy on my trust, an institution that is untrustworthy.
So trust and trustworthiness can really come apart. And actually, in some of the work accelerator's done,
we've really stressed the importance of focusing on trustworthiness as a kind of foundational concept here that institutions, government,
individuals should be focusing on not just how can I make people trust me more,
but how can I behave in a trustworthy manner because warranted mistrust when an agent mistrusts a government, for example, is a really good thing.
A couple of historical examples of David HUME so that the consequences of
unwarranted trust were much worse than placing trust mistakenly in government.
James Madison thought that we should generally distrust government and that
that was part of the way he justified the shape of the American institutions.
And if I woke up tomorrow and found out that a vast majority of the Russian people, for example,
had lost trust in their government, I would say, Oh, what a shame that we've lost trust.
In this case, I think that's fantastic news because those people are not trustworthy.
So if you have the part that distinct notions in that sense.
So before we end with the definition of trust, I want to talk about one other aspect of it.
I guess an interesting property of trust is that one can trust both an individual but also a group or an organisation.
Of course I can say I've lost trust in the Prime Minister, but I can also say I've lost trust in the Government.
We can make sense of that, can't we, of losing trust in the collective?
Yes, absolutely. And I think many accounts would suggest that there's probably slightly different conditions for
a kind of relational trust in individual versus the trust you might hold to an institution.
So often, the accounts of trust, the focus on individuals will stress to trust the person,
you have to rely on them and you have to believe that they have to have some kind of appropriate motivation towards your interests.
Now, when I talk about trusting the Prime Minister, for example, obviously no one would suggest that the Prime Minister has a kind of individual,
one on one relationship with every single member of the country.
But you might think, okay, well, we can describe that in terms of the Prime Minister having the appropriate motivational
status in relation to their duties towards the public as a government representative.
So maybe being motivated by the best interests of the public and so on.
And then institutions, obviously there's that classic quote about institutions that they have no body to be punished and no soul to be down.
They don't have motivation states in the way people do, but we nevertheless do talk generally about trust in institutions.
So what might that mean? Well, some accounts stress this thing called independence, responsiveness,
trustworthy means responding appropriately to the reason the government has to do what they're being relied on to do.
So maybe government making decisions again in the best interests of the public, whatever that means, rather than prioritising electoral benefits.
We don't need to say that they have any kind of emotional states and.
Democracy. There might be particular procedure requirements.
We expect governments to make their decisions along.
It's not enough that a decision is made in a democracy, but that particular process is followed for decision making.
That in some way respects the equality of its citizens, something like that.
Okay, so those are all aspects of the definition of trust and trustworthiness.
Basic question what is the point of trust? So there are generally two different qualities you might talk about in relation to the benefits of trust.
You might think trust has an instrumental value, and you might think trust has an intrinsic value.
On the instrumental point first, giving the pandemic as an example,
the instrumental value of trust can lie there in its capacity to increase compliance with government decision making,
which obviously was especially important during a pandemic where disease is being spread person to person.
So adherence to social distancing restrictions that the government had placed,
that's one of the main ways we were able to break the chain of infection, particularly before vaccinations.
So compliance with government policymaking would be one benefit of increased trust.
Compliance and trust are distinct notions. But also trust has, I would argue, an intrinsic value.
And I think in a democracy you could argue that when we trust the government and when we're correct in doing so, then it's suggesting something.
I think it's suggesting that we think that the equality of citizens is being respected in our decision making and governance,
and also that there's almost an element of self-respect because it's a democratic government.
We're, in a sense, recognising ourselves as fulfilling that capacity of self government,
and we're expecting our fellow citizens as trustworthy in that capacity.
And I think that might be intrinsically valuable if it's held and if that trust is warranted.
In addition to the more, maybe more obvious benefits, the amount is instrumental benefits of trust on policy adherence.
Right. So we've got some of the abstract questions out of the way.
You have touched on the pandemic, but let's get specific and empirical.
Did the British people trust the government during the pandemic?
And were there key moments during the pandemic when trust rose dramatically or fell?
So one thing you saw at the start of the pandemic and you can see this in various pieces
of survey data is trust actually in government rose quite sharply around March 2020.
We saw things like an Ipsos Mori poll that measured support for Boris Johnson at 52%, which is up 16 points from before the December 2019 election.
And we saw that quite globally, actually. And what that some have suggested, that is an example of what sometimes called the rally round,
the flag effect, which is usually talked about in terms of wartime,
but at times of war, support for government increases as we all rally around the flag about this collective effort.
Metaphors of war commonly used in the pandemic as that kind of collective moment of struggle and sacrifice.
And you saw that at the start, unfortunately or fortunately, depending on whether you think the trust would have been warranted or not.
You know, we did see that increase in support and trust last year, particularly long time.
We saw a big drop in government approval ratings around May 2020.
If you think back to what was going on in May 2020,
we saw the Dominic Cummings affair in travelling to Durham at the start of the national lockdown in apparent breach of social distancing regulations.
He didn't resign, he wasn't sacked. That was obviously a massive controversy at the time.
And we saw in respective analysis of data a significant reduction in confidence in Westminster
government compared to the devolved government and the health services in response to that incident.
We also saw levels of trust pretty low around the time that the UK government,
after several weeks of delay and denial, eventually brought in a second national lockdown at the end of 2020.
And then of course, following that, there were a number of other incidents where trust was negatively affected.
Scandals around how government contracts had been procured and organised.
A perception that they'd been given to mates of Ministers rather than through a really vigorous process.
And then, even more recently, party gate.
There is a very clear perception that if we think back to some of those theoretical questions that individual
members of government were behaving in ways very much not fulfilling their personal obligations to the public,
we thought that the government had displayed a lack of competence throughout the pandemic and that a
decreased trust and a general sense that the government wasn't really fulfilling its responsibility.
So we saw reductions there as well. It's interesting that you cite approval ratings because of.
Course one can approve of the government and yet still not trust it.
Those two concepts you can see how they overlap, but they're not synonymous.
And I wonder whether there's a great difficulty in measuring trust.
Yeah, absolutely. I think one recommendation I'd have is just be really specific in what you're asking.
Recognise that those kind of things can come apart.
So for example, compliance with government social distancing, for example, can come apart from whether you trust the government.
I might not trust the government, particularly in its decision making.
Nevertheless, I might wear a mask on public transport whilst it's mandated by the government.
Not because I trust that they've decided on the right policy to say because of qualities about them.
But just because I think independently it's the right thing to do for a number of reasons and I have concerns,
my fellow travellers, my own clinical vulnerability and so on.
But it doesn't really have much to do with my attitudes towards the government.
You know, I might approve of a government, as you say. I might not necessarily trust it.
I'm not approving the government's decision making for purely selfish reasons.
I might say, Well, I'm a member of a particular demographic. I know this government is biased in favour of my personal interests,
but because I recognise that bias, I don't think that's particularly trustworthy at all.
So it's really complicated. And compliance, approval, trust.
They're all distinct notions.
And a final complication is what you might talk about, you know, is the problem of many hands in this kind of big public crisis.
You've got many different institutions that are kind of coordinating with each other.
And you might have different levels of trust and trustworthiness and inscriptions of trust within each of them as it happened during the pandemic.
I might distrust the Westminster government.
Nevertheless, I might trust if I'm a member of one of the devolved countries and I trust my local government,
I might distrust the UK government, but I might have great trust in the National Health Service.
So when we're thinking about did we trust the vaccination programme, for example,
well that might be delivered by a devolved government delivered by the NHS also involve the Westminster Government.
So there's a lot of complications there and that's before we even think about individuals versus institutions as the additional complication of that.
Right. So you might trust the chief medical officer who was Chris Whitty, and you might distrust the Prime Minister.
And I guess that might be one reason why the Government in all its press conferences would
have the scientific adviser of some kind next to them because they were more trustworthy.
Generally, trust in scientific authorities when it's measured is usually higher than trust in central government.
And, you know, yes, you're absolutely right. And you can see that in a positive way,
that it's perfectly legitimate for the government to present the scientific advice from the scientific advisers,
from the scientific authorities that they are better communicators of scientific evidence and on non-expert politicians.
There's also a more cynical interpretation, which is that the government is trying to borrow the credibility of scientific advisers.
And there's also the fact that the government made a great show of the fact that that decision supposedly was just following the science.
That was a big mantra, especially in the early stages of the pandemic,
followed up by not just like dates and not dates when we were trying to decide when to come out of lockdown
measures suggesting that policymaking was basically being to some extent determined by scientific advice,
and therefore that the scientific advisers were the best people to put forward that information.
So the United Kingdom has a population of 60 million people, presumably trust wasn't uniform throughout that population.
It varied according to geography, sex class.
Yeah, absolutely. And levels of trust have not been consistent across all parts of society,
but really have varied across different demographic groups, including gender, age, ethnicity, socioeconomic background.
One survey conducted early in the pandemic found that members of older generations supported the highest level of trust in government.
In contrast to younger counterparts, younger, black,
Asian and minority ethnic participants showed significantly lower average levels of trust in government than their white peers.
And I think this connects, quite interestingly, to questions of trustworthiness,
because there was some empirical data which highlighted some of the reasons that BME people had a lack of trust in the vaccination campaign.
Largely that is a result of the Government's hostile immigration policy, its policies towards minorities, communities in this country more generally.
If you the government you might say, well, actually we conducted this vaccination campaign in a totally trustworthy manner.
No one was asked.
As far as I'm aware, no one has been asked about their immigration status when they tried to go and get a vaccination or anything like that.
So we did this in a trustworthy way. I think that just demonstrates that trust is built up over a long period.
Time in relation to a lot of different aspects of government decision making.
You can't isolate it. You can't expect that a community that has warranted mistrust towards you is suddenly
going to turn the switch and trust you again in relation to one specific thing.
Trust is complicated to build something for a long time in a lot of different contexts.
We've touched on party gate and the fact that Boris Johnson famously or notoriously
was the Prime Minister during a whole bunch of social events in number ten,
when other people outside government were not holding those kinds of events.
And obviously that eroded trust because it exhibited a kind of hypocrisy and that's particularly annoying.
Can I ask you about other factors that might erode trust?
Obviously, competence would seem to be one, but are there ingredients to trust?
I guess that's an empirical question. But if an individual is to trust a politician, how does that politician need to behave?
Well, this has been something that's obviously been considered for a long time, and we almost have the recipe available to us.
In 1995, there was the establishment of the Nolan principles, the seven principles of public life.
Those principles were selflessness, integrity, objectivity, accountability, openness, honesty and leadership.
And we can relate quite clearly to the idea of trust.
We trust if we think the person is competent,
but also if we think they have these motivational stakes in relation to the test of performing and maybe,
you know, the Nolan principles could be seen as the articulation of some of those qualities, those motivations,
the way they relate to their responsibilities in their jobs, and especially in a pandemic where government was obviously extremely prominent,
but individual members of government were extremely prominent, particularly the prime minister, particularly the health secretary.
They were fronting these press conferences every day,
basically telling people what to do in a way that maybe we haven't experienced since the Second World War.
And individual acts of hypocrisy, individual acts of incompetence,
individual acts of favouring your mates in procurement contracts in party when other people were not allowed to gather for funerals.
It's hard to overstate the impact that that justifiably has on trust.
And once again, just to reiterate, maybe that's a good thing.
The fact that people lost trust in government and individuals in government is absolutely a good thing if trust would not be planted.
Is it possible? I don't know if empirical work has been done on this to track the correlation between
an erosion of trust and citizens complying with government regulations and rules.
So I think historically there is evidence that what you might call high trust societies in general, more rule abiding.
We did have surveys that clearly separated questions about trust in government with questions about compliance with social distancing measures.
You can see impacts on compliance when you look at and obviously some of this is still being done.
Now, retrospectively, when you look at compliance with regulations in response to what you might describe
as those kind of key scandal points to Dominic Cummings of party gate points,
where the government demonstrated a lack of competence in its decision making.
It's not a relationship that can be drawn 1 to 1,
and it's very important to separate out these different notions when you're looking at any survey data,
when you're looking at rates of adherence to social distancing measures.
So you've done this interesting work, which both has an analytic conceptual element, but also an empirical component.
Governments need to be trustworthy and they need to be trusted. If citizens are going to follow the rules, there's some kind of link there.
When the next pandemic comes round, as it inevitably will, what will be your advice to the government that has to deal with it?
I think there are some things that are often said about how to increase trust in these kind of situations.
And one of those things is we should have greater transparency and a trust will follow from transparency.
And I think to a certain extent that is true.
I think you need more than just transparency. An obvious point is that transparency into untrustworthy practices will not increase trust.
If we had an entirely transparent look into the way hope would come checks were being awarded,
we might not necessarily have increased trust because you might feel that practice is being done in an untrustworthy manner.
A slightly different point is that the government needs to be transparent about how value laden and inescapably the.
And challenging these kind of decisions in a pandemic.
So I mentioned earlier the follow the science mantra.
There was a sense that the government was trying. It felt to me at least trying to wash its hands of a certain degree of responsibility.
We're just doing what the science tells us.
Now, science is obviously going to be incredibly important in influencing the kind of decisions that we make.
But it cannot determine because the best data on the rate of the viral spread and the effectiveness of vaccinations and
the effectiveness of social distancing measures that can't determine what a government should do in response to that.
They have to weigh lots of sometimes possibly competing values and priorities when they're making that decisions.
So to link that back to transparency, I really think that the government in this pandemic gave a false theory of how decision making was happening.
It was all done just in the course of scientific evidence.
And if you just actually opened up the black box of decision making and showed how complicated and multifaceted and validated those decisions were,
you might not necessarily increase just because you've actually told people that you're making these decisions in a completely different way.
Another thing I say, and this is I think was done excellently,
particularly by the scientific advisers during the pandemic, was just the need to communicate uncertainty.
So in the context of the pandemic,
you are necessarily going to be making decisions before all the information you might like in order to make that decision is going to be available.
So it's left an essential part of communicating policy to communicate that uncertainty and to justify decision making in
the light of it and justify the fact that you might need to make a different decision when more information is available.
So a bit more humility and a little more honesty about the fact that the government just has to make value laden judgements.
Absolutely. And I think there was a real moral hollowing out of decision making in a pandemic.
You very rarely heard government ministers talking in terms of the wide range of values that they would
have to be considering in order to make decisions a bit more honesty about that would be fantastic.
You know, you could see moments where this mantra of follow the science was really crumbling.
For example, in the lead up to Christmas 2021, with a debate around whether vaccine certification for large venues should be introduced,
I think it was pretty obvious that some of the factors going into that decision were, for example,
preserving internal party unity within the Conservative Party as well as the kind of issues of public health.
So a greater honesty and a greater openness and a greater prioritisation of the right kind of normative considerations.
Jamie Webb, thank you very much indeed. Thank you very much, David.
Thanks for listening to the Pandemic Ethics Accelerator podcast.
You can hear more in this six part series on University of Oxford Podcasts.
Well, that's Pandemic Ethics dot UK.