Health Protection (Coronavirus, International Travel) (England) (Amendment) (No. 7) Regulations 2021

Lord Naseby Excerpts

Monday 22nd March 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Naseby (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend on the Front Bench—my goodness, he has broad shoulders—and I warmly support the action he is taking and this SI. I have a couple of questions and concerns.

The first is about the designated entry points. It is obviously easy to do this with flights that come in direct but what about other routes? I have in mind Scotland; I am not sure what is happening there. It is pretty easy to fly into Edinburgh or Glasgow and get across the border. My noble friend from Northern Ireland raised the point that there is not really a border between north and south there. The noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, raised a question about Europe, particularly the areas that are entering the third version of the pandemic. Are they on the red list or not? Secondly, why is it taking quite so long to process people at London airports? The traffic levels are about 25% of normal, yet I was told by somebody last week that it is taking five to seven hours to be processed. There is much talk that they are understaffed.

On paragraph 6.2 of the Explanatory Memorandum, is the passenger locator form working smoothly now? I am not clear about UK nationals coming back from the red zone. Can they isolate at home? I congratulate my noble friend: having had to isolate and caught Covid, I was checked up on by the trace people and by the local authority.

I see that the expiry date for these provisions in 8 June. If they have to be renewed, when will that be?

Finally, I have a question about asylum seekers coming through the red zone. They will not have the resources to pay for a hotel if they are put in one, so how will they be handled? Absolutely finally, the vaccine passport is vital.