It is still unclear why new rules have been brought in, and how long they will last, says Paul Charles, chief executive of The PC Agency and member of the Quash Quarantine group of travel firms
At 00.01 this morning, some of the most bizarre measures ever introduced in the UK were put in place by the Home Secretary Priti Patel. They effectively put a “closed” sign on our borders.
The new quarantine rules mean that anyone entering UK airports, ports and Eurostar has no choice but to self-isolate at home, or even in a hotel, for 14 days. There are some exemptions, including Eurotunnel crews who will have so much paperwork to fill out each time they go in and out of Kent that it will do nothing for its punctuality.
Anyone that breaks the quarantine faces a penalty of £1,000, yet how it will be enforced is the least of the questions being asked. Border Force officers surely won’t be breaking the door down to your abode if you don’t answer the phone or door? Woe betide anyone lying “doggo” in bed with actual coronavirus symptoms, with no energy to even lift their head up to see who’s ringing.
The government says the imposition of quarantine measures is to keep Covid-19 out of the UK, yet surely that is why they should have been introduced in early March before the pandemic spread here, as the wisest countries did in the world, such as New Zealand, Vietnam and South Korea.
The group’s own science advisers, Sage, have apparently not been consulted about why the quarantine measures are being brought in now. The government has not offered any scientific advice whatsoever to back up its decision yet it’s happy to answer most questions by saying “we follow the science”.
However, on this issue, the science appears to be very clear.
“The Sage advice from the experts in this area is that measures like this are most effective when the number of cases is very low, and they’re most effective when they’re applied to countries from higher rates,” said chief scientific adviser Sir Patrick Vallance.
He added: “And the judgment of that time is, of course, not something for us, it’s something for politicians to make. They make the policy, and they make the timing decisions.”
And, amid the economic damage now being done with travel and hospitality firms having to lay off dedicated staff, is there another reason why the government policy is to stubbornly pursue this financially wreckless, unworkable and poorly thought-out measure?
The word from several sources, including Conservative MPs and City financial sources, is that the measures are a tactic by the government’s chief adviser, Dominic Cummings, to help EU Brexit negotiations, by showing how important UK visitors are to the key European economies and that Europe can’t do without them. If millions of us don’t turn up at the beach, then European economies suffer.
So with the science failing to back up these measures, maybe our travel and hospitality sector, which employs nearly four million people in the UK or 11% of the workforce, has become a political football in the Brexit negotiations.
Relations between the sector and a Westminster government are at rock bottom. There is deep mistrust of ministers who are hardly going out of their way to offer visibility as to when we can book a holiday again.
As the Home Office admits some of the measures won’t work in practice, just how many travel and hospitality jobs have to be lost before the government, Boris Johnson, Priti Patel or Grant Shapps realise that this is as daft as policy can ever get?
