Covid Security at UK Borders

Nicholas Brown Excerpts

Monday 1st February 2021 Commons Chamber

[Robert Courts]

The right hon. Lady misheard me. I said that Border Force is working towards achieving that 100% check.

However, there is no room for complacency. We have taken additional steps to limit new covid-19 strains entering the country through the use of travel bans. We have banned travel from southern Africa, Brazil, South America, Portugal and the United Arab Emirates. We will be stepping up police enforcement, making sure that only those who absolutely must travel are leaving the country and checking that those who return are complying with the rules.

We can be clear that we already have in place a system of great robustness, as was noted by my hon. Friends the Members for Morley and Outwood (Andrea Jenkyns), for Derbyshire Dales (Miss Dines), for Rushcliffe (Ruth Edwards) and for Milton Keynes North (Ben Everitt). That includes pre-departure testing, a passenger locator form with enhanced enforcement, and 10 days’ isolation—all assuming someone is not coming from one of the red list countries from which travel is banned, remembering that travel corridors are currently suspended.

In the time that I have remaining, let me deal with the main topic—why not a full travel ban? We have taken the robust but balanced approach that I referred to earlier. We have carefully considered all available options, including applying blanket restrictions, but they are not appropriate for our current situation. We are an island nation yet a global hub, and we are different from Australia and New Zealand, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bexhill and Battle, among others, noted. It is critical that we allow freight to keep moving, and at present 40% of it arrives in the belly of passenger planes. That is the food on our tables, the PPE in our hospitals, the online goods that people order, the supplies that people working at home use.

No one should be fooled that a blanket approach, as we are having urged upon us today, would work. We have to look at what it would achieve. We have only to look at the United States, which closed its borders entirely in the early stages of this crisis and now has one of the worst pandemic experiences in the world, to see how vain that hope could be. Nor is it clear, as the Chairman of the Transport Committee said and as New Zealand and Australia have seen, how borders, once closed, will ever open up again. I therefore disagree with the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper) that we should follow that approach.

[Mr Nicholas Brown (Newcastle upon Tyne East) (Lab)]

claimed to move the closure (Standing Order No. 36).

Question put forthwith, That the Question be now put.

Question agreed to.

Main Question accordingly put.