Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what assessment her Department has made of the potential merits of exempting frontier workers from the ten day quarantine covid-19 rule when travelling to and from a country at least once every two weeks.

To protect the public and the NHS, the exemptions for frontier workers from the self-isolation requirements have been tightened to limit such activity to only what is really necessary.

People working in the UK who live abroad can only continue to enter the UK for work without self-isolating if their work is covered by one of the sectoral exemptions. They may of still travel to the UK for work if it cannot be done remotely but will need to self-isolate for the first 10 days if their work is not covered by one of the sectoral exemptions for critical workers.

We have also tightened our requirements for people who live in the UK but work abroad. In order to remain exempt from the requirement to self-isolate on their return from working abroad, such people must be able to show they travel to work in another country at least once a week, their work cannot be done remotely and their work is deemed critical in the country.

These enhanced requirements also protect the exemptions against being abused by those whose work related reason for travel is not absolutely essential.