Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, if he will publish the data used to make assessments of the travel quarantine restrictions applicable to travel between foreign countries and the UK; and if he will make a statement.

The Government takes a range of factors into account when deciding which countries to add or remove from the Travel Corridor list. This includes:

• an estimate of the proportion of the population that is currently infectious in each country
• virus incidence rates and rates of change
• trends in incidence and deaths
• transmission status and international epidemic intelligence
• information on a country’s testing capacity, testing regime and test positivity rate
• an assessment of the quality of the data available
• effectiveness of measures being deployed by a country
• volume of travel between the UK and that country

?

As this remains a relatively new virus, data about global infection rates and the trajectory of the disease are not always consistent or predictable between countries. That is why each destination is considered on an individual basis, and taken together, the different factors provide a risk assessment that allows Ministers to decide whether a country needs to be removed from the travel corridors list.

I refer the honourable member to the Secretary of State for Transport’s Written Ministerial Statement on travel corridors made on 6 June 2020.