Hotel Quarantine for Travellers

Lord Duncan of Springbank Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd February 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

My noble friend is right that we have to be proportionate and balance risk. I flag that we are aware of the extreme measures some passengers go to in order to avoid boundary controls. Some people go to extraordinary lengths to undertake journeys that, frankly, are dangerous and irresponsible. I would normally consider travel a right of enormous value which I would fight for individuals to have. But in a pandemic, it is different. In a pandemic, travelling is dangerous. You may be taking a variant of significant danger to the country of your destination, and it cannot be regarded as something done easily and lightly, as in normal times.

[The Deputy Speaker (Lord Duncan of Springbank) (Con)]

The next speaker is the noble Baroness, Lady Masham of Ilton. Is the noble Baroness with us? We will come back to the noble Baroness. Let us go to the noble Lord, Lord Clark of Windermere.

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

My Lords, the Minister said that he believed there was a basic right to travel. I put it to him that there is an even greater right to live, yet we have the highest death rate per head of the population of any country in the world. Should we not put the right to live at the top of our agenda?

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

My Lords, matters are evenly balanced. There are 143 confirmed and probable cases of the variant first identified in South Africa. Most of those have been connected with travel to South Africa, and those involved have been isolated. There are around a dozen in respect of which the chain of transmission is not fully understood. We have put in place a substantial team of dedicated tracing professionals to track down those variants of concern, along with teams in the relevant postcodes, so we are doing both a fire blanket of testing within the community and forensic detective analysis to track down the chain of transmission. It is my belief that that will be enough to keep the spread of the virus under control in this country, but we are watchful and concerned.

[The Deputy Speaker (Lord Duncan of Springbank) (Con)]

We will return to the noble Baroness, Lady Masham, after the next speaker, who is the noble Lord, Lord Vaizey of Didcot.

[Lord Vaizey of Didcot (Con) [V]]

My Lords, it may seem paradoxical to impose tough restrictions just when a version of the winning post is in sight, thanks to the Minister and his colleagues’ excellent vaccine rollout. It may give us some comfort if he could update us on how effective his experts think the vaccines will be against the new variants.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

The thrust of the noble Lord’s question is entirely right. We are now living in different circumstances; the variants of concern could emerge as a real threat to the vaccine. This Government will do whatever we can to protect the vaccine deployment and the reassurance it has given to millions of people, and to protect our hospitals, our NHS and life. We will therefore do whatever it takes. He is right that travel arrangements for people must be subject to mandatory control; it is not possible to hope that people will go home and isolate in cases such as this. Hotels may play an important part in ensuring that that mandate is truly effective. Our plans are being processed at the moment; our monitoring of the variants of concern has been upgraded massively, with huge investment in international surveillance. We will update the House accordingly.

[The Deputy Speaker (Lord Duncan of Springbank) (Con)]

My Lords, I am afraid the time allowed for this Question has now elapsed.