Question to the Cabinet Office:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what lessons they are learning from other countries about effective border controls in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic; and what they are doing to put those lessons into effect.

Governments around the world have had to strike the correct balance between border restrictions and ensuring that essential travel remains possible.

The UK has one of the toughest border regimes in the world. We are taking a cautious approach to open up international travel to protect the UK from variants of concern and new infections while the vaccine roll-out is ongoing.

Given the challenge we see with the spread of new variants and the situation in many countries around the world, we must make sure that the countries we reconnect with are safe.

The recently introduced traffic light framework aims to protect public health whilst facilitating international travel, allowing families and friends to reunite and our businesses to start thriving again.

This analysis of border measures is one of many policies that are continuously inspected as an international comparison, alongside an array of other non-pharmaceutical interventions that are taken by countries in their response to COVID-19.