Chief executive of the Science Media Centre Fiona Fox warns about the dangers of planned changes to government communications.

Last week saw a guest paper published by the Institute for Government from Lee Cain, Boris Johnson’s former Downing Street director of communications, elaborating on a plan he had hatched while in Whitehall to overhaul government communications.

Cain, who worked in Number 10 from 2019 to 2020, believes that the system is failing. Of interest to me he argues that unclear lines of responsibility and mixed messages from different government departments undermined the government’s Covid-19 response.