‘My god I’ve seen Gove talk some absolute rubbish, but this is off-the-scale demented.’
The levelling up minister has denied that focusing on leaving the EU without a deal hindered the country’s preparedness for the pandemic. In fact, he’s said the opposite.
Gove, who played a leading role in the 2016 Leave campaign, told the Covid-19 public inquiry that planning for a no-deal Brexit actually helped, making Britain ‘match fit’ for the pandemic.
In contrast to senior officials’ warnings that because civil servants were occupied in planning for a no-deal Brexit, work devoted to pandemic planning was sidelined, Gove insisted that focusing on Brexit made the country better prepared for a health crisis like Covid.
“Preparation for the EU exit was some of the best preparation we could have undergone for any future crisis,” he told the Covid inquiry.
The secretary of state for levelling up, housing and communities continued that the ‘daily battle rhythm’ of leaving the EU without a deal, “made government more match fit for the terrible events that this inquiry has been set up to address.”
Gove’s comments counter findings that six projects involving pandemic planning had been ‘stopped’ or limited as a result of the government’s no-deal Brexit work. One project involved planning for a ‘healthcare surge’ and benchmarking the NHS’s preparedness on a global scale.
Addressing the inquiry, Roger Hargreaves, director of the government’s Cobra crisis management hub, said the crisis response system had been “pulled out of shape” by crises including planning for Brexit.
But Gove was adamant that he “hasn’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.”
The Tory minister’s comments were immediately leapt on and ridiculed.
“Michael Gove claims work for no-deal Brexit made UK ‘match fit’ for pandemic…. He thinks we’re mugs,” wrote retired lawyer Fionna O’Leary.
“My god I’ve seen Gove talk some absolute rubbish, but this is off-the-scale demented,” posted another stunned onlooker.
“Utterly cynical or utterly deluded,” was another comment.
The veteran Tory MP and Cabinet minister is the latest high-profile Conservative figure to attempt to defend government actions when giving evidence at the Covid inquiry.
In late June, former chancellor George Osborne rejected claims that his austerity programme left the NHS in a ‘parlous state’ for the pandemic. Like Gove’s defence of no-deal Brexit planning, Osborne even argued that the UK may not have had the financial scope to spend vast amounts to support he public through the crisis without austerity.
Gabrielle Pickard-Whitehead is a contributing editor to Left Foot Forward
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