[1andrew1]

If the government knew "Brexit planning drained resources from pandemic preparations that the UK government knew were needed" then there must be a question mark around its judgment.

Brexit planning affected UK pandemic preparations, Covid inquiry told

Attention was diverted from response to virus by the time it started to spread, says chief counsel

The preoccupation with Brexit planning drained resources from pandemic preparations that the UK government knew were needed, the opening session of the official Covid-19 inquiry was told on Tuesday.

Speaking on the first day of public hearings, Hugh Keith, the inquiry’s chief counsel, said the preparations for Brexit had required a great deal of planning, particularly to address what were likely to be “the severe consequences of leaving the EU without a deal”.

Keith told the inquiry that rather than improving the government’s generic capacity to respond to a civil emergency, Brexit preparations had diverted attention from pandemic planning by the time coronavirus started to spread in the UK in early 2020, weeks after the UK left the EU.

“It is clear that such planning from 2018 onwards crowded out and prevented some or perhaps a majority of the improvements that central government itself understood were required to be made to resilience planning and preparedness,” he said.

https://www.ft.com/content/51d18972-...3-bcd0f7b0f819