The government’s no-deal Brexit planning crowded out efforts to manage the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the first evidence session of the UK COVID-19 Inquiry – set up to examine the country’s response to and impact of the pandemic – which took place on Tuesday.
The UK formally ended its 47-year membership of the European Union on 31 January 2020, weeks before the pandemic struck.
“That departure required an enormous amount of planning and preparation, particularly to address what were likely to be the severe consequences of a no-deal exit on food and medicine supplies, travel and transport, business, borders and so on,” Hugo Keith KC, counsel to the inquiry, said during the session.
And so, such planning “crowded out” and “prevented” some of the improvements that the government understood were required to be made to resilience planning and preparedness, Keith added.
While the session acknowledges that a Pandemic Flu Preparedness Board was established upon realising that their strategy from 2011 needed updating, the work of the board was “stalled because of the preoccupation with readiness for Brexit,” said Hugo Keith KC, the lead lawyer to the inquiry.
(Sofia Stuart Leeson | EURACTIV.com)
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