Data, trust, democracy and Covid-19: the first parliamentary assessment of the UK government’s approach to data during the pandemic

Abstract

IMPACT: The coronavirus crisis has led to governments making huge interventions into everyday life. These interventions have been justified on the basis of published data. However, the authors argue from the experience of a recent UK parliamentary report, that policy-makers need to be mindful of the double task that this data performs—both in securing the democratic legitimacy of the restrictions made to everyday life and in securing the adherence of people to those restrictions.