Policy advisers should not be silenced

Though all advisers like Nutt accept that they are not the democratically elected representatives of the people and that ultimately it is the politicians who make the decisions, their role is clearly more than just the dispensing of some technical scientific advice: it is to advise on the direction policy should take.

Where this clashes with political (vote-gathering) whim, it becomes a classic case of the irresistible force meeting the immovable object. The scientists and experts will not compromise their position any more than politicians will budge from theirs. This becomes extremely damaging for all concerned when the spats are played out in public. Proclamations that policy is evidence-based become completely undermined; one letter to a national newspaper noted that Nutt's sacking proved once and for all that we live in a climate not of evidence-based policy but of policy-based evidence. Ministers pick and mix the evidence that suits them.

The paradox in the Johnson/Nutt case is that there is growing public acknowledgement that cannabis does not merit the attention of being a Class B drug, while most people are aware that alcohol and tobacco present far greater harms, especially when their usage is considered in the round - not only the personal risk but also the social consequences and implications for criminality. Nutt wins hands down, despite the natural charm of Alan Johnson.

Such altercations between ministers and their key advisers rarely reach such public prominence. I was a member of the ministerial advisory group on children and young people's services at the beginning of this decade. It was formed by the then minister for young people Paul Boateng and was intended not only to advise him but also set the direction for the newly formed Children and Young People's Unit. Its members included luminaries in the field such as Gillian Pugh and Paul Ennals. But two years later the minister had changed. John Denham was then simultaneously introducing the more insidious framework for dealing with antisocial behaviour while planning to attend a special session of the United Nations on children, finally rescheduled in New York following its cancellation immediately after 9/11.

I wanted the committee to write a letter to Denham asking him to explain how he could reconcile the Asbo agenda with the government's commitment to children's rights. I anticipated he would handle that fairly easily but felt it was the group's responsibility to raise the issue. I made the case at the next meeting and seemed to command almost unanimous support for the idea. We never wrote the letter. The chair, a senior civil servant, reported under Any Other Business that the committee would henceforth cease to exist.