Question to the Home Office:

To ask Her Majesty's Government, further to the Written Answer by Baroness Williams of Trafford on 22 June (HL5670), what assessment they have made of the likelihood of people travelling to the UK on a weekly basis being infected with COVID-19 compared to those travelling to the UK (1) fortnightly, or (2) frequently but irregularly; what assessment they have made of whether applying quarantine measures to people who travel to and from the UK for work purposes (a) fortnightly, or (b) frequently but irregularly, is in keeping with their approach that those who are unable to work from home and can return to work should do so; and why, with the exemption of weekly travellers, quarantine measures are applied to travellers with no threshold on the period of stay outside the UK.

The additional Health Measures at the Border introduced on 8 June aim to reduce the risk posed by imported cases of Covid-19 to the UK. A small number of groups are exempt from the self-isolation requirement, including those who live outside the UK but work in the UK and travel between their country of residence at least once a week. This exemption is based on the need to maintain peoples’ ability to attend their place of work, and not their infection status.

The exemption for those travelling at least once a week ensures that those who live in one country but are employed in another can continue to pursue their employment if they are unable to work from home and can return to work. Opening up this exemption to less frequent travellers risks opening this exemption to wider business-related travel for which it is not intended.

The self-isolation applies to all arrivals, rather than being based on the period of stay outside the UK as the virus has an incubation period where symptoms may not have yet developed.