Michael Gove strongly denied planning for a no-deal Brexit weakened pandemic readiness and claimed it actually helped in evidence to the UK Covid-19 public inquiry.
Senior officials in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have previously told the investigation that as scores of civil servants were switched to planning for the UK to crash out of the EU, work to update and develop pandemic plans was sidelined.
But Gove, the secretary of state for levelling up, housing and communities and a lead figure in the 2016 Vote Leave campaign, said: “Preparation for the EU exit was some of the best preparation we could have undergone for any future crisis.”
No-deal Brexit planning had a “daily battle rhythm” and “made government more match fit for the terrible events that this inquiry has been set up to address”, he said.
Six pandemic preparation projects were “stopped” or reduced as a result of the Operation Yellowhammer no-deal Brexit work. Roger Hargreaves, director of the government’s Cobra crisis management hub, gave evidence that the government’s crisis response system had been “pulled out of shape” by crises including planning for Brexit.
Projects dropped included a “pandemic influenza strategy refresh” – which was supposed to examine how countries in Asia, such as South Korea, had dealt with previous coronavirus pandemics – planning for a “healthcare surge” and benchmarking the NHS’s preparedness internationally.
But Gove insisted: “I haven’t yet seen any activity that has been identified that would have enabled us to significantly better deal with the Covid-19 pandemic that did not occur as a direct result of EU exit.”
Pandemic planning related to flu rather than a coronavirus and when it was put to Gove that some of that planning would have nevertheless helped, he said: “I don’t think that can be proven.”
Earlier pandemic planning exercises had recommended revisiting plans for social care, where more than 40,000 people died with Covid, including workforce capacity and infrastructure but this was hampered by no-deal Brexit.
“I don’t know what it is that would have been different in the approach that was taken towards adult social care that could have been anticipated beforehand,” he said.
Meanwhile it emerged that key official bodies set up to tackle race, gender and other inequalities had no involvement in pandemic planning before Covid hit, government insiders have told the UK Covid-19 public inquiry.
There was “inadequate consideration” of the risk of different groups heading into a health crisis not on a level footing, and the government’s race disparity and disability units “had no involvement in pre-pandemic preparedness within government”, the opening module investigating the UK’s preparedness heard.
Amid evidence that the virus took a greater toll on black and minority ethnic communities and disabled and elderly people, Marcus Bell, the director of the equality hub in the Cabinet Office, was asked if pandemic preparedness was on his radar, and replied: “It wasn’t.”
Melanie Field, the chief strategy and policy officer at the Equality and Human Rights Commission, a statutory body, told the inquiry: “There was an inadequate consideration both of the existing health and other inequalities that might mean that people going into an emergency situation would not be on a level footing and … that they might need different responses in order to come out to have equal outcomes.”
On Thursday, Field said the EHRC had no contact from the government to provide assistance in terms of pandemic planning and emergency preparedness. “I am surprised,” Field said. “The issue was not on the commission’s radar either … our strategic priorities did not include a focus on health and social care.”
Dr Richard Horton, the editor-in-chief of the Lancet, told the inquiry: “This was not an equal-opportunity virus.” He said: “In the specific realm of pandemic prevention, we should be giving greater attention to those who are living with chronic disease and to those who are living in more deprived communities.”
Horton, who has written a book called The Covid-19 Catastrophe, addressed the conundrum of why ministers and officials had felt the UK was well prepared for a pandemic.
The Global Health Security Index by Johns Hopkins University and the World Heath Organization rated UK preparedness highly. But Horton said those assessments did not account for “how our political leaders or health leaders frame the threat, how we assess the threat and how we respond”.
The inquiry continues.
