The following Statement was made in the House of Commons on Tuesday 9 February.
“With permission, I would like to make a Statement on new measures to keep this country safe from coronavirus. Thanks to our collective efforts, we are turning a corner. Cases of coronavirus have fallen 47% in the last two weeks, and they are falling in all parts of the UK, but we are not there yet. Hospitalisations are falling, but there are still many more people in hospital than at the April or November peaks, and the number of deaths, while falling, is still far too high.
Our vaccination programme is growing every day. We have now vaccinated over 12.2 million people—almost one in four adults in the United Kingdom—including 91.4% of people aged 80 and above, 95.9% of those aged between 75 and 79, and 77.2% of those aged between 70 and 74, who were the most recent groups to be invited. We have also vaccinated 93.5% of eligible care home residents. We have made such progress in protecting the most vulnerable that we are now asking people who live in England who are aged 70 and over and have not yet had an appointment, to come forward and contact the NHS. You can do that by going online to nhs.uk, or dialling 119, or contacting your local GP practice, so that we can make sure that we reach the remaining people in those groups, even as we expand the offer of a vaccine to younger ages.
These are huge steps forward for us all, and we must protect this hard-fought-for progress by making sure we stay vigilant and secure the nation against new variants of coronavirus that put at risk the great advances that we have made. Coronavirus, just like flu and all other viruses, mutates over time, so responding to new variants as soon as they arise is mission critical to protect ourselves for the long term. We have already built firm foundations, like our genomic sequencing, which allows us to identify new variants, our testing capacity, which allows us to bring in enhanced testing wherever and whenever we find a new variant of concern, and our work to secure vaccines that can be quickly adapted as new strains are identified.
Our strategy to tackle new variants has four parts. First, the lower the case numbers here, the fewer new variants we get, so the work to lower case numbers domestically is crucial. Secondly, as I set out to the House last week, there is enhanced contact tracing, surge testing and genomic sequencing. We are putting that in place wherever a new variant of concern is found in the community, like in Bristol, Liverpool and, as of today, Manchester. Thirdly, there is the work on vaccines to tackle variants, as set out yesterday by Professor Van-Tam. Fourthly, there is health protection at the border, to increase our security against new variants of concern arriving from abroad.
I should like to set out to the House the new system of health measures at the border that will come into force on Monday. The new measures build on the tough action that we have already taken. It is of course illegal to travel abroad without a legally permitted reason to do so, so it is illegal to travel abroad for holidays and other leisure purposes. The minority who are travelling for exceptional purposes will be subject to a specific compliance regime and end-to-end checks throughout the journey here. Every passenger must demonstrate a negative test result 72 hours before they travel to the UK, and every passenger must quarantine for 10 days. Arriving in this country involves a two-week process for all. We have already banned travellers altogether from the 33 most concerning countries on our red list, where the risk of a new variant is greatest, unless they are resident here. But even with those tough measures in place, we must strengthen our defences yet further.
I appreciate what a significant challenge this is. We have been working to get this right across government and with airport operators, passenger carriers and operational partners, including Border Force and the police—I thank them all for their work so far—and we have been taking advice from our Australian colleagues, both at ministerial level and from their leading authorities on quarantine. The message is, ‘Everyone has a part to play in making our borders safe.’ I know this is a very difficult time for both airlines and ports, and I am grateful to them for working so closely with us. They have such an important role to play in protecting this country and putting in place a system so that we can securely restart travel when the time is right—the whole team at the borders working together.
Let me set out the three elements of the strengthened end-to-end system for international arrivals coming into force on 15 February. This new system is for England. We are working on similarly tough schemes with the devolved Administrations, and we are working with the Irish Government to put in place a system that works across the common travel area. The three parts are as follows: hotel quarantine, testing and enforcement.
First, we are setting up a new system of hotel quarantine for UK and Irish residents who have been in red-list countries in the last 10 days. In short, this means that any returning residents from those countries will have to quarantine in an assigned hotel room for 10 days from the time of arrival. Before they travel, they will have to book through an online platform and pay for a quarantine package, costing £1,750 for an individual travelling alone, which includes the hotel, transport and testing. That booking system will go live on Thursday, when we will also publish the full detailed guidance.
Passengers will be able to enter the UK only through a small number of ports that currently account for the vast majority of passenger arrivals. When they arrive, they will be escorted to a designated hotel, which will be closed to guests who are not quarantining, for 10 days, or longer if they test positive for Covid-19 during their stay. We have contracted 16 hotels for an initial 4,600 rooms, and we will secure more as they are needed. People will need to remain in their rooms and, of course, will not be allowed to mix with other guests. There will be visible security in place to ensure compliance, alongside necessary support so that, even as we protect public health, we can look after the people in our care.
Secondly, we are strengthening testing. All passengers are already required to take a pre-departure test and cannot travel to this country if it is positive. From Monday, all international arrivals, whether under home quarantine or hotel quarantine, will be required by law to take further PCR tests on day 2 and day 8 of that quarantine. Passengers will have to book those tests through our online portal before they travel. Anyone planning to travel to the UK from Monday needs to book these tests, and the online portal will go live on Thursday. If either of these post-arrival tests comes back positive, they will have to quarantine for a further 10 days from the date of the test and will, of course, be offered any NHS treatment that is necessary.
Any positive result will automatically undergo genomic sequencing to confirm whether they have a variant of concern. Under home quarantining, the existing test-to-release scheme, which my right honourable friend the Transport Secretary has built so effectively, can still be used from day 5, but that would be in addition to the two mandatory tests. The combination of enhanced testing and sequencing has been a powerful weapon throughout this pandemic, and we will be bringing it to bear so that we can find positive cases, break the chains of transmission and prevent new cases and new variants from putting us at risk.
Thirdly, we will be backing this new system with strong enforcement of both home quarantine and hotel quarantine. People who flout these rules are putting us all at risk. Passenger carriers will have a duty in law to make sure that passengers have signed up for these new arrangements before they travel and will be fined if they do not. We will be putting in place tough fines for people who do not comply. That includes a £1,000 penalty for any international arrival who fails to take a mandatory test; a £2,000 penalty for any international arrival who fails to take the second mandatory test, as well as automatically extending their quarantine period to 14 days; and a £5,000 fixed penalty notice, rising to £10,000, for arrivals who fail to quarantine in a designated hotel. We are also coming down hard on people who provide false information on the passenger locator form. Anyone who lies on a passenger locator form and tries to conceal that they have been in a country on the red list in the 10 days before arrival here will face a prison sentence of up to 10 years.
These measures will be put into law this week, and I have been working with the Home Secretary, Border Force and the police to make sure that more resources are being put into enforcing these measures. I make no apologies for the strength of these measures, because we are dealing with one of the strongest threats to our public health that we have faced as a nation. I know that most people have been doing their bit, making huge sacrifices as part of the national effort, and these new enforcement powers will make sure that their hard work and sacrifice are not undermined by a small minority who do not want to follow the rules.
In short, we are strengthening the health protection at the border in three crucial ways: hotel quarantine for UK and Irish residents who have visited a red-list country in the past 10 days and home quarantine for all passengers from any other country; a three-test regime for all arrivals; and firm enforcement of pre-departure tests and the passenger locator form. Our fight against this virus has many fronts, and just as we are attacking this virus through our vaccination programme, which protects more people each day, we are buttressing our defences with these vital measures, to protect the progress that together we have worked so hard to accomplish. I commend this Statement to the House.”
My Lords, a hotel quarantine policy has been debated for months and was finally announced two weeks ago, yet the legislation underpinning the scheme has not been laid. That means that, yet again, Parliament cannot scrutinise and vote on the regulations until after they have been brought into force. Can the Minister advise the House when they will be published and when we will get the opportunity to debate them? I hope that he will be able to assure me that they will not be laid at the 11th hour, as so many other coronavirus regulations have been, which would mean that people who are impacted by this policy and need to implement it will have to get up to speed very fast indeed to make the necessary arrangements.
The UK’s quarantine policy is due to come into effect on Monday. It is exactly a year to the day since I raised this exact issue in your Lordships’ House in response to a Statement repeated by the Minister’s predecessor, the noble Baroness, Lady Blackwood. Her answer was basically that the Government would be putting the resource into dealing with quarantine immediately. A year later, “immediately” has not really happened, which is a shame. We have possibly borne the burden of deaths as a result of that, too.
It is also clear to see that there are gaping holes in the Government’s new hotel quarantine system. Figures suggest that thousands of people travelling from higher-risk countries will be missed by the scheme every day. Analysis of passenger data suggests that 10,000 passengers will arrive in the UK on Monday from countries where the South African or Brazilian variants of Covid-19 are circulating but which are not yet on the Government’s “red list”. These people—roughly 19 out of 20 passengers —will avoid hotels and ask to quarantine at home. Yet just three in every 100 people are being checked to ensure that they comply with home quarantine. Does the Minister think that that is good enough? Given that we know that the South African and Brazilian variants of the virus involve a key mutation, E484K, which may help the virus evade antibodies and render the Pfizer and Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccines less effective, the Government’s failure to secure our borders risks jeopardising the fight against Covid-19 just at the moment when it looks like we are making significant progress. So I hope that the Government will urgently review the policy and extend quarantine to all travellers arriving in the UK.
My Lords, the Minister is right to say that it looks as if the corner has been turned on cases, and even on hospitalisations, in this most recent surge. I too, like the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, look forward to actually seeing the quarantine regulations being laid in Parliament. We keep asking for sight of them as early as possible. We have known that this quarantine arrangement was coming in—leaks started in December.
The BMA and other medical groups are concerned that those without GPs must have access to the vaccine. Last week, the Government announced that undocumented migrants can register with GPs for a Covid vaccine without fear of being prosecuted by the Home Office. This is good news, as we need everyone possible in the country to be vaccinated, to keep us all safe. However, the law currently requires the NHS to report those without a defined migration status. This amnesty announcement, based on the suspension of so-called immigration data sharing between the health service and the Government, is temporary, only during the pandemic. What safeguards are there that this data will not be shared after the pandemic is over? A temporary amnesty will not encourage people to come forward if their data can later be shared.
According to Ministry of Justice data, 2,400 Covid-positive cases were recorded in prisons in December—a rise of 70% in a single month. Given that the Government have a legal duty to provide equivalent healthcare to those in prison, can the Minister explain why prisoners in priority groups 1 to 4 started to be vaccinated only from 29 January?
Will the Minister answer a question I asked earlier this week without a response? There have been number of reports of Sitel and other call centre contractors having their contracts reduced by government and immediately sacking track and trace staff because, as a Sitel manager said,
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I turn to the implementation of the policy. Will the Minister update the House on the number of beds in hotel rooms that have been secured for travel quarantine measures? Can he confirm whether they are seeking to expand capacity in anticipation of extending the policy to further countries? What steps are being taken to ensure that staff in quarantine facilities are given adequate PPE? I would also be grateful if the Minister could outline what support and financial assistance will be in place to help people seeking to return to the UK from “red-listed” countries who cannot afford the up-front £1,750 quarantine cost. This is very important, given that, among the numerous categories of travellers, there are likely to be people who had to go abroad at short notice for family emergencies.
Finally, it has been announced that people found to have omitted to reveal that they have travelled from a “red list” country could possibly face up to 10 years in prison under the Forgery and Counterfeiting Act 1981. While the penalties for non-compliance are a core part of any regime, does the Minister accept that a 10-year prison sentence is really disproportionate? It is more severe even than sentences given out for some violent and sexual offences. Sir Keir Starmer has, quite rightly, pointed out that pretending judges would sentence anyone to that long in prison, in court cases that—given the current backlog—will not be heard for several years, is not going help anyone and probably will not deter anyone.
“At this point in time as a business we need to reduce the number of agents because we have done our jobs.”
Can the Minister please confirm or deny that the Government have asked for track and trace staff numbers to be reduced? Do the Government still believe that test, trace and isolate remains a vital part of coming out of this pandemic, or are they totally relying on the vaccine? Everything that the scientists and doctors are telling us is that we will have to continue to take all precautions, such as “hands, face, space”, and will also need all the protection tools, such as test, trace and isolate, for some time to come, otherwise we will be hurtling towards yet more cases, hospitalisations and deaths.
That brings me to borders. On 22 January last year, alongside the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, I asked the Minister’s predecessor what steps were being taken to monitor flights from places where Covid-19 had been confirmed or was suspected. I have repeatedly raised worries that the UK was not following either the World Health Organization advice or the actions of the CDC in America, which has resulted in many cases coming into the UK from China and the Far East and, during February, through those returning from skiing holidays in Italy, France and Austria. Every step of the way, the Government have been too slow in making arrangements to monitor passengers, whether placing them in quarantine at home or, as is now proposed, in quarantine hotels.
Some countries have learned through experience that early action at borders is vital. South Korea, Australia and New Zealand are notable examples. Taiwan should be a role model for us all. It began monitoring passengers arriving as early as 31 December 2019, and shortly afterwards created formal quarantining, both at home and in hotels, with electronic monitoring by health teams. Its Government’s clear communication with its people, providing the carrot of a support package for anyone quarantining, as well as the stick of substantial fines, has meant that a country of 23 million people had, in 2020, fewer than 800 cases, with only seven deaths. One city alone has 3,000 hotel rooms reserved for quarantining; the Government here are proposing 4,000 for the whole of the UK. And the fines in Taiwan are not small, at up to 300,000 New Taiwanese dollars—about £7,500—with one businessman who breached quarantine seven times in three days fined more than £26,000.
Taiwan’s approach is as much about self-isolation as it is about quarantine for those coming from abroad, and the view of the Taiwanese public is that everyone should do their civic duty, helped by the clarity of messaging from the Government and their medical experts. So it is a shame that our Government’s key message is all about the maximum prison sentence. We need as much of the carrot in our approach, rewarding people for self-isolation, preferably by paying their wages and by supporting them with care calls and delivering shopping and medicines, most of which has been notable by its absence to date.
Two things are clear from the worries over the new variants. The UK public want to do their duty. The vast majority of people are complying with lockdown. They also understand that the nature of Covid-19 is changing, and that new variants mean we must change the way we live too. So will the Government please make the changes that we on these Benches have asked for, for over a year, regarding borders? Otherwise, we risk losing all the progress made with vaccinations, we risk children not returning to school, and we risk further and substantial damage to our economy.