Covid-Secure Borders

Yvette Cooper Excerpts

Tuesday 15th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab) [V]]

We are in this situation now because of the delta variant: there are over 40,000 cases across the country, up from just a couple of hundred two months ago. Without it, the covid rate would by now be very low and pubs, cafés and clubs would be back to normal, but because of the delta variant the Government are having to be careful and we are having to take more time. This was not inevitable and it was predictable. Ministers could have slowed things down and given more time for the NHS to get the vaccine rolled out by putting India on the red list earlier—weeks earlier. They could and should have taken a precautionary approach. They did not do so, however, and in those few weeks in April hundreds of people with covid arrived from India with, it is estimated, hundreds of separate cases of the delta variant.

Ministers are saying that they acted as soon as they had the information to do so, but they did not. Even when they finally announced that India was going on the red list, they inexplicably delayed for a further four days—but why? They allowed dozens more packed flights to return and people to go home to family and friends, accelerating the spread of the delta variant.

More importantly, there were serious signs way before then. Covid cases in India were already accelerating in March, up from 11,000 a day at the beginning of the month to 80,000 a day by the end, and doubling again by 9 April. That alone should have set alarm bells ringing. Canada was warning about high rates of covid cases on flights from India by 20 March. We are told, too, that the delta variant was first identified in the UK on 1 April; I hope the Minister will confirm in replying whether that is true.

The Government have said that they were acting slowly because they did not have the full case-positivity data on people arriving from India for several more weeks afterwards, but that is a nonsense argument, because we know that that data does not tell us what is happening now; it tells us only what was happening several weeks ago. We could not afford to wait for several weeks when we already had the evidence that the India cases where accelerating fast. We know that the Government were reluctant; we know that they wanted to wait until the last possible minute so that the Prime Minister could make his planned trip to India, but the lesson of covid is that we cannot wait until the last possible minute; we have to act early.

If the Government are confident that they took the right decisions, why are they still not publishing the advice and risk assessments from the Joint Biosecurity Centre, which the Home Affairs Committee called to be published back in August last year? Why the secrecy? The Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies papers are all published, so why not publish the Joint Biosecurity Centre analysis? They should publish it on Portugal, publish it on other countries—publish it on all countries across the world so that we can have proper, transparent debate about the risks and challenges and what action needs to be taken. It would be far better to do that.

Why will the Government also not recognise some of the weak points in the current amber home quarantine system that the delta variant has exposed? People with the delta variant travelled home under the amber system and the variant still spread, in part because people can travel home by public transport from the airport without any test on arrival and can go home to their friends and family, who do not have to self-isolate or even get tested. By the time the asymptomatic traveller tests positive, their flatmates or friends could have been in work or in shops, which means that new variants can spread.

Time and again I have called on the Government to learn from the South Korean model of home quarantine, which has tighter rules. I still believe that they should learn those lessons in order to look forward with a sustainable approach as international travel opens up. The real tragedy is that, time and again, they have not listened and learned. In the first wave, we had no covid border measures in place for months; as a result, an estimated 10,000 people arrived and accelerated the pandemic at an earlier stage. It is reported that, during the summer, people returning from summer holidays in August and September contributed to the second wave, because we did not have a proper testing system in place at the border.

We now face a new challenge because of the new variants and the failure to put India on the red list. The Government need to learn these lessons: first, we need much greater transparency so we can have a proper and open debate about where the risks are; secondly, we need a better surveillance system so that we have up-to-date data rather than waiting for any lags; and thirdly, we need to strengthen the quarantine system so that we can prevent new variants from spreading. People have done their bit across the country to support the vaccine programme. Now the Government need to do their bit and not let people down at the borders.