Covid-Secure Borders

Alex Davies-Jones Excerpts

Tuesday 15th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Alex Davies-Jones (Pontypridd) (Lab)]

I am grateful to be called in this debate and it is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield).

Time and again throughout the coronavirus crisis, we have seen delays, mistakes and U-turns from the Government. The shambolic last-minute approach to the border policy has fundamentally put people across the UK at risk. The Government were too late to start formal quarantine, too late to start testing at the borders and too late to add India to the red list, even when all the evidence suggested that they needed to act swiftly. More than a year down the line, we continue to feel the impact of the delays and the Government’s utter incompetence.

The delta variant is now the dominant strain in the UK, with 29,000 cases reported in one week alone. Ministers simply cannot say that this has taken them by surprise or that they did not have time to act. The Government knew that the delta variant had entered the UK on 1 April, yet it took them 22 full days—more than three weeks—to move India to the red list. They also cannot say that they were not warned. Time and again, my right hon. Friend the Member for Torfaen (Nick Thomas-Symonds) and many other Opposition Members urged the Government to act swiftly, and time and again they were ignored. During this delay, at least 20,000 people, many of whom could have had the delta variant, arrived into the UK from India.

I am very pleased to see reports today that two doses of both the Pfizer and AstraZeneca vaccines provide more than 90% protection from hospitalisation with the delta variant. It would be remiss of me not to put on the record my sincere gratitude to all the incredible staff and volunteers, who have worked extremely hard, especially in Wales, to vaccinate our population. In Wales we have a world-leading vaccination programme, and every adult has been offered at least one dose of the vaccine. However, the Government’s ongoing failure to get a grip of border policy opens us up to the very real and very dangerous possibility of vaccine-resistant covid strains.

The amber list causes chaos and confusion for my constituents. The last-minute change in Portugal’s status left people paying huge amounts of money for flights with little notice, and many were left panicking about invalid insurance and insufficient protection from the UK Government. Even once back in the UK, the situation is no better. We have all heard the horror stories and the all-too-frequent cases where the quarantine system has failed our citizens. I have heard in depth from one of my constituents, who has recently returned from the United Arab Emirates. He outlined the many steps that he has taken to keep himself and others safe, which include following local guidelines, having two vaccinations as well as a vaccination booster, weekly PCR tests and antibody test results—the list goes on.

However, all my constituent’s efforts seem to have gone to waste, as there was no control system of social distancing in place while he was in transit to Amsterdam. Despite travelling from a red list country, upon his arrival at Birmingham airport he was free to mix and collect his luggage with all other passengers. Surely more thought needs to be put into those logistics. The Government simply must see the error of their ways and immediately bring an end to their haphazard, last-minute, catch-up approach to border policy.

I feel a great deal of sympathy for those with family living abroad. Many will have gone more than a year without seeing their loved ones, and I can only imagine how hard that must be, but we must be cautious. We cannot risk further lockdowns and further deaths, especially when we consider the huge sacrifices that people have made in the last year to follow the rules and to bring down cases.

As we wait for travel to be safe again, let me once again plead with the Minister to work with his colleagues to introduce proper sector-specific support for the aviation industry. GE and British Airways in my constituency of Pontypridd have already had to make significant staffing cuts, but staff are worried that there are more to come. While trade unions such as my own, Unite, are doing their best to support workers in the industry, their warnings to the UK Government have been dismissed and ignored.

We really are at a crossroads. While I am grateful for the positive work on the vaccine roll-out, and the work of our fantastic NHS across the devolved nations, enough is enough. I urge the Minister to hear our pleas and work with colleagues across Government Departments and across the House to act now to bring an end to this utter chaos.