Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, if he will publish the evidential basis for the exclusion of African nations for the purposes of an air bridge to allow covid-19 quarantine free travel from UK.

Ministerial decisions on International Travel Corridors are informed by risk assessments provided by the Joint Biosecurity Centre (JBC), working closely with Public Health England (PHE), using a methodology endorsed by the four Chief Medical Officers of the UK which has been published on GOV.UK.

Risk assessments focus on the public health risk, posed by incoming travellers, to the UK population. The JBC and PHE monitor information from over 250 countries, territories and islands daily to inform these risk assessments.

The Government has made consistently clear it will take decisive action if necessary to contain the virus, including removing countries from the Travel Corridors list rapidly if the public health risk of people returning from a particular country without self-isolating becomes too high.

The African nations of Namibia, Rwanda, and Mauritius and the Seychelles are currently on the Travel Corridors list.