Deputy prime minister Oliver Dowden claimed that planning for a no-deal Brexit made the UK “match fit” for the Covid pandemic.
The senior Tory minister told the Covid inquiry that preparations for crashing out of the EU without a trade deal put the country in a “strong position” to respond to other challenges.
Mr Dowden, Cabinet Office minister from July 2019 to February 2020, said the UK was in a “pretty strong state of preparedness” for any future pandemic – telling the public inquiry he had taken an interest in planning, including for a possible flu pandemic.
Hugo Keith KC, counsel to the inquiry, has previously said that work arising from the threat of a no-deal Brexit under Boris Johnson may have drained “the resources and capacity” that were needed for pandemic planning.
Mr Keith asked Mr Dowden on Wednesday about a 2019 memo about the National Security Council threats programme which suggested that work on pandemic influenza was expected to be affected by the “step-up in planning for a no-deal exit from the EU”.
Mr Dowden said: “It was the case at that time that ‘no deal’ was the default position of the government … this is worth remembering the kind of frankly, apocryphal warnings that were being delivered about the consequences of no-deal Brexit.”
The cabinet minister said: “For example in relation to medicine supplies and elsewhere - it was appropriate that ... we shifted the resilience function to deal with this.”
“Secondly, it was not a permanent shift; we knew that this thing would come to an end since we had an endpoint for if we didn’t reach a deal, no deal would happen.”
He added that there was a “flip side” to the preparations for a no-deal Brexit – known as Operation Yellowhammer – which made the UK “match-fit” for the pandemic.
He said it “made us match fit for when ... we did have to deal with the actual materialisation of the Covid pandemic – that is to say it forced government departments to work together closely, so there’s a lot more cross-government co-ordination”.
Boris Johnson’s no-deal Brexit threat under scrutiny— (PA Wire)
Mr Dowden said around 15,000 extra staff had been employed for work on Brexit “who then were able to be redeployed once the threat of no deal had passed in order to further step up our preparedness, to contribute to our Covid response”.
Asked if the preparations had an impact on the majority of work programmes to deal with a flu pandemic, Mr Dowden said: “No, I don’t actually, I didn’t fully accept that.”
He said if resources were not reprioritised the UK “would have been in a much worse position to deal with Covid when it hit had no deal actually occurred”, especially “in terms of medicine, supplies, and so on”.
Mr Keith told the inquiry last week that the evidence so far suggested that “crowded out and prevented” the work that was needed to prepare for the next pandemic.
Oliver Dowden says no-deal Brexit planning made UK ‘match fit’— (PA Wire)
Mr Dowden’s evidence contrasted with that from the government’s former chief scientific adviser, who also gave evidence on Wednesday morning.
Professor Sir Mark Walport said the UK was “not operationally prepared” for a pandemic. “I think, scientifically, the country was quite prepared then in the sense that it was recognised,” he told the inquiry.
He added: “I think operation preparedness is another matter. I think it’s clear that we were not operationally prepared.”
It came after a Conservative former health minister said “making money is not a crime” as he defended the VIP lane for coronavirus-related contracts which saw some politically-connected firms make huge profits.
Lord Bethell also blamed “longstanding” inequalities for the NHS not being sufficiently prepared for the pandemic.
He was speaking after former prime minister David Cameron and his chancellor, George Osborne, rejected claims at the inquiry that their austerity measures left the UK exposed to the pandemic.
Lord Bethell, who was health minister throughout much of the pandemic, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Wednesday: “We didn’t have enough of that capacity, but we haven’t had for a very long time … The Tories didn’t invent the inequalities in this country, they are longstanding.”
