• FOR the past two years the government has been disdainfully dismissing any claims about the negative consequences of Brexit, ignoring inconvenient truths and demonising experts!

The COVID-19 pandemic has confronted it with the truth about experts, they have a vital part to play and ignoring evidence-based, factual, advice can be extremely dangerous.

The government has also reluctantly admitted to the fact that there will be a negative economic impact of Brexit.

Put bluntly the majority of us will be poorer, but it is telling that it has not been prepared to publish its own impact assessments (so it is not unreasonable to conclude that the damage will be greater than they are admitting).

Some people believe a period of slower economic growth is a small price to pay for “taking back control” and that being free from EU rules would be to our advantage.

However the coronavirus has sharply exposed the flaws in this argument! Leaving the European Medicines Agency will mean that our ability to rapidly access lifesaving drugs will be restricted.

That is, more people will probably die as a consequence of this decision! And it doesn’t stop there.

The government is proposing to exit from a whole raft of EU regulatory bodies concerned with critical aspects such as aviation safety standards, law enforcement, data sharing and security, the European Arrest Warrant, Erasmus education programmes, workers’ rights protection, environmental standards etc.

In other words the government is engaging in “ideological vandalism” by being prepared to sacrifice the health, safety and wellbeing of UK citizens for some ideological crusade.

It doesn’t matter how you voted on Brexit; no one voted for our standards of living to fall, for life expectancy to reduce, for greater impoverishment of our lives and for us to be less safe!

The coronavirus pandemic is understandably taking centre stage but behind the scenes the government is quietly working away at dismantling many of the protections that are central to a civilised society.

It is incumbent on us all – opposition parties, employers, trades unions, local authority leaders and citizens to make our voices heard and stop a mere 365 MPs destroying the lives of 60 million citizens.

DOUG CRAWFORD, NW3