Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, if he will publish the criteria used to assess the suitability of countries with which the UK plans to establish international travel corridors.
The Government has announced that it has assessed the health measures at the UK border and as a result passengers will be exempted from self-isolation requirements in certain circumstances on arrival in the UK. This will apply to international rail, maritime, and aviation.
The Joint Biosecurity Centre, in close consultation with Public Health England and the Chief Medical Officer, has developed a categorisation of countries and territories from which it is considered to present a lower risk from a public health perspective for passengers to enter the UK, without a requirement for 14 days isolation. This has been informed by factors including the prevalence of coronavirus within the country and, crucially, the numbers of new cases and the potential trajectory in the coming weeks of the disease in the country. This categorisation will inform Ministerial decisions about the easing of the current border measures.
The Government will announce further details including a full list of the countries and territories from which arriving passengers will be exempted from self-isolation requirements later this week.