Lord Wood of Anfield
Main Page: Lord Wood of Anfield (Labour - Life peer)Department Debates - View all Lord Wood of Anfield's debates with the Home Office
(4 years, 2 months ago)
Lords ChamberMy Lords, we would wish to instigate a four-nations approach, and we engage across four nations in an attempt to get unified approach. That has been our aim all along.
My Lords, on 4 April the EU and the UK experienced over 40,000 new Covid-19 cases, and the UK had no quarantine provision. Yesterday, the EU and the UK experienced just 16,000 new Covid-19 cases, a 60% reduction, and we now have a 14-day quarantine provision. How can there be any logic in insisting on quarantine for travellers from EU countries that have negligible numbers of new cases compared to ours, when transmission within the UK is overwhelmingly likely to come from UK residents and not foreign travellers?
The noble Lord makes a point about different rates of infection and the strategies that we have employed. When the initial rate was low, we were trying to contain the virus. Then the peak happened, and measures at the border were seen to be very ineffective. Now that they are now low again, mandatory self-isolation comes in to keep them low.