FM says UK borders 'too leaky' despite quarantine rules
UK borders will still be "too leaky" despite the introduction of hotel quarantine rules for some international travellers, Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon has said.
The UK government's new rules will apply to people arriving from 33 countries deemed "high risk". Health Secretary Matt Hancock described this as "the right approach". But Ms Sturgeon wants the UK government to follow Scotland and extend the rules to cover all international travellers. The new quarantine restrictions will take effect from Monday. People arriving in England from "red list" countries must isolate for 10 days in hotels, costing £1,750. However, Scotland's rules will apply to all international travellers. Mr Hancock told BBC Radio Scotland's Good Morning Scotland programme that passengers arriving in England from "low risk" countries would be required to quarantine at home - even if their home was in Scotland - rather than face hotel quarantine at their point of entry. He said travellers to England would be required to take three tests - one before travel, then further tests two days and eight days after arrival. Mr Hancock said that policy was the "right approach". "There are some countries where the risk, because of the number of cases domestically, is very low and we have this robust set of testing arrangements in place," he said. "If you require a hotel quarantine for people coming from anywhere, then that includes people coming from countries where there aren't any cases or where the cases are significantly lower than they are anywhere in the UK." Speaking at the Scottish government's coronavirus briefing, Ms Sturgeon said Scotland's approach was "more in line with scientific advice". "When we are faced with new variants, we don't know which countries they are in because not all countries do really extensive genomic sequencing," she said. The first minister said she could only impose restrictions on people arriving directly into Scotland. She said discussions were continuing with the UK government, and that she had raised her concern that "UK borders as a whole are… still a bit too leaky to protect properly against importation of this virus and new variants of it. "We are still trying to persuade the UK government to impose the same kind of restrictions that we are doing, and then that takes away the problem." Ms Sturgeon added that Scotland could also be "asking the police to do more than they are doing right now in terms of the checks coming into the country". "Nobody wants to be doing this. I want people to be able to travel freely, but this is a public health crisis." 'Huge efforts' Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer has already called for regulations across the UK to be brought in line with Scotland. Scotland's Health Secretary Jeane Freeman, earlier told Good Morning Scotland that the country's policy was based on clinical and public health advice. "I think it is a fair return for the huge efforts that people across Scotland are making in restricting their own lives in order to bring cases down. "We, and the UK government, have a responsibility to try and do everything we can to prevent the virus coming in. "Remembering this is a global pandemic, we're not here as a wee island entirely on our own. We need to be working globally." She said border checks between Scotland and England would be considered to prevent the inward transmission of the virus at any of Scotland's port, air and land borders "without disrupting necessary supply chains". Deputy Chief Medical Officer Dr Nicola Steedman said multiple infections coming in from abroad and across the UK "seeded the pandemic within Scotland" in the first and second waves.