Britain’s former health secretary has advised an official inquiry that the United Kingdom was ill-prepared for a pandemic partly due to government resources having been diverted away from pandemic planning to prepare for a possibly chaotic no-deal Brexit.

Matt Hancock said officials had to scramble to source protective equipment, implementing mass testing and contact tracing systems “from scratch” once the coronavirus pandemic broke out because the U.K.’s planning attitude was “completely wrong.”

Hancock said the focus had been on planning for the consequences of a disaster, not how to prevent the virus from spreading.

The U.K. had one of the highest COVID-19 death tolls in Europe.

Hancock offered an emotional apology Tuesday to all those who died and were affected.