Brexit delayed pandemic plans says disaster experton March 30, 2022 at 5:24 pm

Planning for Brexit got in the way of the government preparing for Covid, despite warnings that a pandemic could pose a “major risk”, a top disasters expert has said.

Prof Lucy Easthope said a “slow erosion of priorities” meant that by January 2020, government meetings to discuss UK pandemic planning had been postponed.

She said planners felt “stymied” in trying to ensure the UK was prepared.

The government said the pandemic had challenged health systems globally.

As one of the UK’s leading experts on disaster planning and recovery, Prof Easthope has worked on the response to major incidents including the 9/11 and 7/7 attacks, the Grenfell Tower fire and the Covid-19 pandemic.

Speaking to Emma Barnett on BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour she said the UK had “acted too late” in its response to the coronavirus pandemic.

Prof Easthope – who has written a new book on her experiences, called When the Dust Settles – said disaster experts were told “we couldn’t plan for Brexit and a pandemic at the same time, it was too ridiculous to think of both happening at the same time”.

Asked who made this statement, she said it came as a “slow erosion of priorities” with meetings on pandemic planning delayed, or cancelled altogether.

By January 2020 – when reports of a “mysterious viral pneumonia” emerged from the Chinese city of Wuhan – Prof Easthope said “multiple meetings at ministerial department level had been postponed”.

The UK went into its first national lockdown in March 2020, with Prime Minister Boris Johnson telling people they could only leave their homes for limited reasons to slow the spread of Covid.

Prof Easthope said disaster planners felt “very stymied” in their ability to go into the pandemic with their “best foot forward”.

The UK went into the pandemic with a “very depleted” health and social care system, leaving disaster planners “very very nervous”, she added.

The country also lacked proper supplies of personal protective equipment (PPE) – designed to protect health and social care workers from coronavirus, she said.

“As disaster planners, we were devastated by the loss of the PPE stockpile. The essential part of the pandemic plan…developed since 2004, was a major logistics contract that would manage the PPE.”

But she said her understanding was that the stockpile was rundown between 2017 and 2020 so when disaster planners “went to reach for it…it wasn’t there”.

A BBC Panorama investigation in April 2020 found the government failed to buy crucial PPE to cope with a pandemic, with no gowns, visors, swabs or body bags in its stockpile when Covid reached the UK.

Prof Easthope said disaster planners knew a pandemic was the UK’s “highest and most likely National Risk” but that they struggled to convince central government it was a “major risk”.

She said experts wanted to “constantly” test and prepare for a pandemic, but found they needed “ministerial engagement” to boost the need for a PPE stockpile or better funding for elements of intensive care.

Looking ahead, Prof Easthope said a public inquiry would “uncover how much work was done… and how easy it is to erode that, particularly during times of austerity”.

The Covid inquiry’s public hearings are set to start next year. Its draft terms of reference were published last month.

Prof Easthope said at the moment, a “common trick” was to tell bereaved families the pandemic was “unpredicted and unplanned for”.

But on meeting these families recently, she said their pain had been “almost reopened all over again at the idea that there were people who had worked very hard” to map the pandemic out.

A government spokesman said: “The Covid pandemic was unprecedented and challenged health systems around the world. Throughout the pandemic we have been guided by scientific and medical experts, and our main priority was to protect the NHS and save lives.

“As the National Audit Office Report on Covid-19 Pandemic Preparedness recognised, the government benefited from EU exit planning as well as the challenge of balancing multiple priorities.

“Thanks to our national efforts, we are now one of the most open countries in the world, and our focus is on building back better from the pandemic and delivering Brexit opportunities that benefit the British public.”