Hotel Quarantine for Travellers

Lord Lancaster of Kimbolton Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd February 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

The noble Baroness is completely right to cite Australia, and we take our hat off to its remarkable achievement in using its island status to protect itself against the virus. We are responding to the challenge of new variants by upgrading our measures, and announcements on this will be made shortly. The CMO’s view on the variants of concern so far is that we should have a proportionate system, which means an upgrading and not necessarily an Australia-style system. But we are putting in place the kinds of measures that could be upgraded to an Australia-style system were there to be a threat of significant magnitude.

[Lord Lancaster of Kimbolton (Con)]

My Lords, yesterday, the UK recorded 16,840 new Covid cases. Australia and New Zealand recorded six and one respectively. Of course, we should not be encouraging people to travel to the UK, but some people have no choice—for family reasons, for example. I encourage my noble friend, before we adopt a blanket approach to hotel quarantine, which may be appropriate for high-risk countries, to think about the cost. Can he reassure me that the Government are more than capable of adopting a dynamic, risk-based approach to hotel quarantine?

[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.