Health Measures at UK Borders

Joanna Cherry Excerpts

Wednesday 27th January 2021 Commons Chamber

[Priti Patel]

My hon. Friend raises some important points, and he is right. I stood at the Dispatch Box yesterday, speaking about the importance of freight and the work that the Government have done over recent months, and in the run-up to Christmas, to keep freight moving, despite the various border closures that took place. Indeed, that makes my hon. Friend’s point, because we simply cannot have that approach—there are logistical and operational challenges, and the Government are working through many of those.

My hon. Friend makes an important point about changes to guidance and advice across Government, and the Department of Health and Social Care, the Department for Transport and the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office all play an important role in public communications and assurances regarding countries and any changes that take place. Clearly, the Government will publish that information and come to the House to share it. However, current guidance is clear that people should be staying at home unless they have exceptional reasons to travel. Going on holiday is not a justifiable excuse or reason.

[Joanna Cherry (Edinburgh South West) (SNP) [V]]

I thank the Home Secretary for her statement and for advance sight of it. My Scottish Government colleagues are concerned, as she knows, that her proposals do not go far enough; I would be grateful if she would confirm that she will listen to their representations.

It is, of course, the Home Secretary’s Department’s responsibility to control the United Kingdom’s external borders. Her Department holds the passenger data and the UK Border Force reports to her, so it is right that the Home Secretary should be the one to address the risks raised by the transmission of the virus by arrivals from abroad. I am going to repeat the questions that I asked during the exchanges on yesterday’s urgent question on this same topic, which the Home Secretary did not answer. I hope that, having had 24 hours’ notice to think about my questions and discuss them with her colleagues and advisers, she will now answer them.

In April and May of last year, I wrote to the Home Secretary asking for comprehensive health protections at the UK’s external borders, and I referred to the measures that were being introduced in other countries in Europe and around the world. Other Home Affairs Committee members were making similar requests, backed up by evidence. Last week, the Home Secretary admitted that we were right, and said that she thought that the United Kingdom should have closed its borders earlier, so why did she fail to take precautions that she knew were needed at the start of the pandemic? What stopped her from closing the borders? Was it her Cabinet colleagues? If so, why did she not resign and speak out, given the risk of increased transmission from people entering the country?

Finally, have the Government commissioned an assessment of what contribution the failure to close the borders earlier has made to the dreadful death toll across the United Kingdom? Will the Home Secretary put the results in the public domain? These questions concern not just my constituents and those of my SNP colleagues, but people throughout the four nations, so will she please answer them?

[Priti Patel]

First, I very much repeat what I said yesterday about working with all the devolved Administrations —clearly the Government are doing that, and the right hon. and learned Lady will be well aware of that.

With regard to everyone now going retrospective in thinking that they were the first advocates of bringing in health measures at the border, that was clearly not the case, as I recall from the Select Committee last April—I mentioned that yesterday, too. If I may, I shall reacquaint the right hon. and learned Lady with the measures that were brought in from January 2020: from the minute that self-isolation advice was given by the FCO at the time to the SAGE recommendations on self-isolation for those coming from specific countries; the new regulations and statutory instruments that were brought in on 10 February, with new powers for medical professionals and the police to detain individuals suspected of covid symptoms; the guidance to UK airports; and the travel advice put out by the FCDO—all between February and March.

Self-isolation measures were introduced for specific countries; we introduced mandatory quarantine and the passenger locator form back in June last year; we closed the border to Denmark after the first identification of a new strain—which, of course, we were able to deal with because of our genomic sequencing capacity in the UK; we introduced test and release and the ban on flights from South Africa, which clearly is still in place; and we introduced carrier liability for pre-travel testing.

Each of the measures we have introduced has added another layer of protection against transmission of the virus, and that reduces the risk of dangerous new strains being imported into the UK. The right hon. and learned Lady should reflect on the fact that there is not one single measure that mitigates risk entirely. Every measure that has been brought in helps to reduce risk, protect the vaccine and, importantly, protect the British public and public health.