WP's suggestion that Govt is withholding information in Covid-19 White Paper 'quite uncalled for': DPM Wong

SINGAPORE — The White Paper on the Government’s handling of the Covid-19 crisis is "more comprehensive" than an internal review report that the Opposition had asked to make public, Deputy Prime Minister Lawrence Wong said.

He also said that the opposition Workers' Party (WP) should not cast doubt that any relevant information was kept from the public in the White Paper that was published on March 8.

Wrapping up two days of debates in Parliament, Mr Wong, who is also Finance Minister, said on Tuesday (March 21) that the published paper gave a “fuller synthesis of all our learnings” based on the past three years of handling the pandemic.

He was responding to a call by the WP the day before to make public an internal review by former head of civil service Peter Ho from which the White Paper drew its findings.

Outlining the genesis of that internal review, Mr Wong said that the Government had asked Mr Ho in late 2021 to undertake a review of Singapore’s Covid-19 experience until August 2021 and to draw lessons from it.

“At that time, we had envisaged it as an interim or mid-term review, because we were not clear when we would be able to fully transition to endemic Covid,” Mr Wong said, referring to the endemic stage where the country would live with the disease as it does with influenza, for instance.

Various government agencies embarked on their own after-action reviews "in parallel”, focusing on policy and operational decisions within their respective areas.

Mr Ho’s review focused on key strategic lessons for the Government in order to minimise duplicating the reviews done by the agencies, Mr Wong said, adding that after Mr Ho had completed his report, the Government had gathered more experience handling the pandemic.

“There was therefore a need to pull together the findings from Mr Ho’s interim report and the agencies’ after-action reviews, as well as the lessons from our more recent experiences, into a consolidated report that would fully reflect all that had transpired over the last three years and provide a fuller synthesis of all our learnings.”

On suggestions to redact or remove sensitive parts of Mr Ho’s findings that relate to national security and releasing the remaining portions, Mr Wong said that “that is precisely what we have done”.

“Whatever is relevant and fit for release, we have incorporated into this White Paper. And the White Paper is in fact more comprehensive than what Mr Ho’s review had set out to cover, because it includes information from the agencies’ after-action reviews as well as learnings from our experience after August 2021,” he added.

In response to Mr Wong’s comments, Leader of the Opposition Pritam Singh said on Tuesday he maintained the position that “we don’t know what we don’t know”.

“We do not know what is stated in Mr Ho's report and the after-action reviews from the respective ministries. It would be important, in my view, for Singaporeans to consider the details and the breadth of perspectives secured from all who participated in the various after-action reviews.”

The WP chief added: “I hope this information can be made available to the public at some point. But this difference of opinion does not overshadow the Workers Party's support for the motion.” 

He was referring to the motion being debated in Parliament over the two days on Singapore's response to Covid-19.

Mr Wong then said that Mr Ho’s report focused on the lessons for Singapore and included details that were sensitive commercially and in terms of national security.

Releasing the report while removing these sensitive details will “essentially end up" with the lessons already contained in the White Paper.

“In fact, it will be a subset of the White Paper because as I explained just now, the White Paper goes beyond Mr Ho's report,” Mr Wong added.

He also said that the Government is open to hearing differing views over the recommendations and lessons in the paper so that the nation can be better prepared.

“But I think it is quite uncalled for to suggest that there has been any withholding of information by the Government in putting together this report,” he added.

“I hope that Mr Singh and the Workers’ Party will live up to the ideals that they called for, in upholding national unity when we deal with and learn from this pandemic.”

INDICATOR SYSTEM FOR PUBLIC HEALTH RESPONSE

Separately during the parliamentary session, Mr Gerald Giam, WP’s Member of Parliament, asked Health Minister Ong Ye Kung how does a newly proposed tiered system for public health status differ from a suggestion that Mr Giam himself had raised back in 2021.

The proposed four public health situational tiers that are expected to be part of the Infectious Diseases Act were announced on Tuesday by Mr Ong and the full changes will be put to Parliament later this year.

For the moment, Singapore has the Disease Outbreak Response System Condition, a colour-coded system that signals the extent of disease risk faced by the community.

Mr Giam said that he had asked in July 2021 if the Government could develop a Covid-19 risk index that aggregates indicators to offer guidance to policymakers on decisions to ease or tighten safety protocols.

“Minister Ong replied then that it will not be wise to define a full, definitive threshold for full reopening and that it would not be very useful to devise an index to guide our public health actions,” Mr Giam added.

In response, Mr Ong said that using an index to decide on policy “will tie our hands”, because situations such as the Covid-19 pandemic are fluid and would require flexibility.

He also said that each tier in the newly announced system provides a “range of options you (can) mix and match” depending on the characteristics of the pathogen involved, making it more flexible.

“There is a framework. A framework is not equal to an index,” he added.