We’ve been a bit slack this week in the bunker with just five downsides added to the dossier, although several may be of key importance. The change of government seems to have marked the low point of Brexit and in our relations with Europe.
A summit involving 45 leaders of the European Political Community, hosted at Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire by Sir Keir Starmer to galvanise support for Ukraine, was a triumph and his new message of solidarity and cooperation won praise in EU newspapers.
Covid Inquiry report
Wednesday saw the publication of the first 240-page reportfrom the public inquiry led by Baroness Hallet into Britain’s resilience and preparedness for the Covid-19 pandemic. It confirms officially what has long been suspected, that among other failings, under both Theresa May and Boris Johnson, the Conservatives prioritised Brexit over pandemic planning.
Official UK figures put the number of deaths involving Covid-19 in the four nations at over 225,000 as of June 2023 and while the inquiry hasn’t said how many deaths might have been avoided with better preparedness, it’s safe to assume the figure is a significant one.
By January 2020, just as the pandemic was getting started, the cabinet-level body responsible for pandemic planning (the threats, hazards, resilience and contingencies sub-committee) had effectively been abolished with surge planning for health and social care sectors still not completed.
Witnesses told the inquiry that the prioritisation and re-prioritisation of limited resources was a frequent cause of inaction, something Baroness Hallet describes as a “widely recurring theme in the evidence”.
Katharine Hammond, director of the civil contingencies secretariat from August 2016 to August 2020, told the inquiry that Operation Yellowhammer, the government’s contingency planning for a ‘no deal’ Brexit, was a “really major consumer of resources”. The ‘no deal’ threat was always worthless but purchased by Johnson at the expense of planning for a possible pandemic.
Brexit U-turn on alignment
On Brexit itself, after years of negotiating and implementing our slow and painful divergence from the EU, Nick Thomas-Symonds, the government’s ministerial envoy to Brussels, has essentially announced a U-turn and the beginning of another painful process of re-alignment.
He told the FT that Britain wanted to build closer ties on a wide range of issues including security, dismantling trade barriers and migration. The trade barriers he wants to ‘dismantle’ are the ones David Frost and Johnson spent a year building during the trade and cooperation agreement talks.
This comes after the King’s speech setting out Labour’s proposals for government included a product safety and metrology bill designed to “preserve the UK’s status as a global leader in product regulation, supporting businesses and protecting consumers”. Labour plans to do this by simply copying EU regulations into UK law. That’s the way to lead, eh?
A briefing note says the bill will ensure that “the law can be updated to recognise new or updated EU product regulations, including the CE marking, where appropriate to prevent additional costs for businesses and provide regulatory stability”. Passive as well as active divergence is coming to an end.
It also says that the UK could “end recognition of EU product regulations, where it is in the best interests of UK businesses and consumers” but I don’t expect to see a lot of that, and neither does Jacob Rees-Mogg who told his GB News viewers that Starmer is undoing Brexit “by stealth”. Many remainers won’t care how he does it.
Brexit downsides
Housing
Labour’s pledge to build 1.5 million homes in England over the next five years is at risk due to a shortfall of more than 150,000 skilled construction workers, according to Tim Balcon, CEO of the Construction Industry Training Board (CITB). Among the factors driving the net loss are an ageing workforce and changes to UK immigration rules as a result of Brexit, which led to a steady decline in the numbers of immigrant construction workers.
The FT says a CITB report last year found UK visa costs for skilled construction workers were typically higher than in comparable countries such as Germany and Canada, which offer migrant workers low-cost, simplified visa schemes.
Health
As already noted, the Covid-19 inquiry led by Baroness Hallet has officially found that senior health officials were diverted to plan for a “no deal Brexit” – ultimately killing more people when Covid struck in 2020, reports The iNews.
In the same month that the UK’s first two Covid cases were discovered, the cabinet-level body responsible for pandemic planning had been effectively abolished before its work was completed, leaving a “significant amount” unfinished, and in particular any surge planning for the health and social care sectors.
A Labour councillor in Portsmouth has blamed Brexit for the shortage of ADHD medicine. Cllr Tom Coles said the shortage has resulted in people having to “trawl around pharmacies” searching for available stock. Another Portsmouth councillor, Matthew Winnington, said: “Whether you think Brexit is a good or bad thing, I think pretty much the consensus is the way that Brexit was handled, and indeed what it did to our medicine supply chain has been an absolute disaster.”
Trade and regulation
Thomas-Symonds, the UK’s new envoy to the EU, has told the FT that: “What business wants is fewer barriers to trade [with the EU].” Thomas-Symonds said Britain wanted “structured dialogue to happen as soon as possible” to build closer ties on a wide range of issues including security, dismantling trade barriers and migration.
He confirmed that Britain was also seeking an UK-EU leaders’ summit to help seal the new partnership, saying both sides would be “laying some groundwork for this in the autumn”.
And to “prevent businesses from being burdened with new costs and red tape” the government, as already mentioned above, plans to introduce legislation to make it easier for the UK to copy and paste EU product safety regulations into UK law.
It marks the beginning of Britain’s new role as a rule-taker when it comes to product standards and ends the fiction that Britain was ever going to be able to develop its own regulations in opposition to the EU. The Brussels effect has triumphed again.
The world’s sixth largest economy is effectively sub-contracting most of its product regulatory function to an outside body. So much for ‘taking back control’.
