Covid-Secure Borders

Claire Coutinho Excerpts

Tuesday 15th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Claire Coutinho (East Surrey) (Con)]

The right hon. Gentleman talks about a tougher border policy to keep out variants. Can he explain why the delta variant is present in Australia?

[Nick Thomas-Symonds]

Because nobody can provide 100% protection against anything—[Hon. Members: “Oh!”] Conservative Members jeer, but it is about time they took a bit of responsibility for the failure of their Government. They argue with me about comprehensive hotel quarantine, but not one of them had the courage to vote against it in the Lobby in February. They have completely failed to put in place every possible measure that they should have implemented. That is a comprehensive failure.

Between 6 January, when the third national lockdown in England began, and the end of April, 1.59 million people flew into the UK. Only a tiny percentage underwent hotel quarantine. Most damaging of all was the abject failure to add India to the red list in time. Even if the Government had refused to introduce hotel quarantine, which they should have done, it was clear that more countries needed to be added to the red list. Pakistan and Bangladesh were added on 9 April, yet the Prime Minister waited 14 more days before adding India. Civil Aviation Authority figures suggest that at least 20,000 passengers who might have been infected with the delta variant arrived from India between 2 and 23 April—a staggering number. It is unbelievably reckless that on his list of priorities, the Prime Minister put having his photograph taken with Prime Minister Modi ahead of protecting jobs and the safety of this country. Nobody is blaming people who travelled when they were permitted to do so. The blame lies with the UK Government for their unjustifiable delay.

Last night at the Dispatch Box, the Health Secretary claimed that he took a decision based on the evidence available to him at the time. On 1 April—the day before he says he took the decision—India recorded the highest one-day spike in 2021. It was hardly a secret; it was on newspaper front pages. Cases were surging, and there it was—publicly available—but it seems it did not prompt him to act. It has also been reported that on the same day, Ministers knew about the delta variant being discovered in the UK, but that did not prompt him to act either. The Government must now publish the risk assessments that were done on India by the Joint Biosecurity Centre, so that we may have maximum transparency on exactly how that disastrous decision to delay was made.

Last night, I heard the Health Secretary claim that we on the Labour Benches called for India to be added to the red list with the benefit of hindsight. What nonsense! If the Conservatives had listened to us on the Labour Benches and voted with us, protections would have been in place from February. I have the Hansard, and the Health Secretary can check the facts in Hansard, if he wants to. Let us hear no more about hindsight. We want Ministers to show some judgment and foresight.