Health Measures at UK Borders

Lord Clark of Windermere Excerpts

Thursday 4th February 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

I thank the noble Lord for his suggestion. Of course, the Government are open to any suggestions that might make the process more efficient. In response to his question about how long this will go on for, we are completely guided by the numbers. Obviously there have been very pleasing developments recently—the numbers are going down. The noble Lord is absolutely right that technological advances are always very useful in this regard. As to the three-hour wait, even though air travel is 90% down, I suspect that the reason for the wait to which the noble Lord referred was because of the step-up in checks and procedures at the border.

[Lord Clark of Windermere (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, the Minister has a well-earned reputation of being very assiduous, and she has shown that today in answering the questions. May I test her a little further? In a nutshell, on 27 January, the Home Secretary, when she was announcing that we were going to have to tighten up our borders, said that there were

“too many people coming in and out of our country each day.”

That was eight days ago and, as I understand it, we might have to wait another 10 days before the Government’s new policy is implemented. I know that the Government—and especially the Minister—are very thorough, so can she give me some advice about the Government’s estimate of the number of individuals who enter this country every day who may be carrying the disease and how that will mount up over the days? How can the Government justify taking so long to implement this new policy?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

I thank the noble Lord for his question. It is very nice to see him after so long; I have not seen him for ages. My right honourable friend the Home Secretary did say that too many people were going in and out of the country, which helps to spread the virus and risks new variants going in and out. I have a very old figure for the percentage of individuals who may be carrying the virus into the country, but I suspect it is out of date. That figure is 2%, but I am going back nearly a year now. If it is wrong, I will give the noble Lord a more up-to-date figure. I suspect it is not correct now.

Why are the quarantine hotels taking so long? I presume that was the question. It is a DHSC matter, and it has to procure the hotels and put Covid-secure arrangements in place for people to quarantine. Some of the arrangements in Australia are incredibly stringent.