Covid-19

Lord Hunt of Kings Heath Excerpts

Thursday 11th February 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

The virus mutates all the time and minute variations have happened from the very beginning. However, this virus has been unusual in not having profound mutations; it had not changed its seriousness, its transmissibility or its escapology in a meaningful way until the end of last year. Those were not—how shall I put it?—completely unexpected, but they had not been identified before. When they were identified, we changed our tactics, our strategy and our approach. Our determination to keep out variants of concern is manifested in these proposals, and we have moved extremely swiftly to enforce border control as the threat has mounted.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I want to follow up on that question. The SAGE minutes of 21 January make clear that

“reactive, geographically targeted travel bans cannot be relied upon to stop importation of new variants … due to the time lag between the emergence and identification of variants of concern, and the potential for indirect travel via a third country”.

By confining the quarantine measures to travel from red-list countries, are the Government not ignoring the SAGE warning about indirect travel?

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

My Lords, SAGE is entirely right that we have to be careful about indirect travel. That is why we have introduced a passenger form that requires people to detail all their recent travels. It is why we have attributed to the filling-in of the form very serious enforcement measures, including the potential for a large custodial sentence if it is filled in incorrectly. It is why we are using all the benefits of technology and of airline databases in order to track people’s travel and ensure that they are not in any way misleading us or skipping around borders to get here. The noble Lord is right that this is a very serious matter. This is a 21st-century pandemic and we are determined to use the techniques of the 21st century to keep out variants of concern. Countries such as Taiwan, Iceland, Australia, New Zealand and Singapore have demonstrated that if you use thoughtful 21st-century methods then you can make a big impact on transmission, and that is what we are determined to do.