Boris Johnson has refused to shut UK borders despite Nicola Sturgeon saying Scotland will quarantine all international arrivals in hotels.
The Prime Minister claimed it is “not practical” to shut Britain’s borders after he was criticised for dragging his feet by Labour leader Keir Starmer.
Sturgeon confirmed on Tuesday that everyone who comes to Scotland directly from overseas will have to quarantine and said that she did not think the UK government was going far enough.
But there are a tiny number of daily direct international direct flights to Scotland compared to 21,000 passenger arrivals across the United Kingdom.
In the Commons Starmer attacked the Prime Minister for ignoring Government scientists who recommended “a complete pre-emptive closure of borders” to stop new variamts of covid arriving.
Starmer said: “Today we’re likely to hit 10 million vaccinations, which is remarkable. The biggest risk to the vaccine programme at the moment is the arrival of new variants such as the South African variant.’
He told the Commons: “21,000 people are coming into this country every day. The Prime Minister’s new border arrangements are still weeks away from being implemented and will only affect direct flights from some countries.”
“We know from the first wave of the pandemic that only 0.1 per cent of virus cases came from China where we had restrictions, whereas 62 per cent came indirectly from France and Spain where there were no restrictions.”
“So why did the Prime Minister choose not to do the one thing that Sage said could prevent new variants coming to the UK?”
Johnson replied: “Actually, SAGE did not recommend a complete ban and they say that travel bans should not be relied upon to stop importation of new variants.”
The PM claimed Britain had “one of the toughest regimes in the world”, where travel was already banned from the 33 countries and other arrivals needed a negative test on arrival.
The PM added: “It is not practical completely to close off this country as he seems to be suggesting. He can’t have it both ways. He simultaneously says that he wants the borders to be kept open for freight reasons or to allow businesses to carry on whilst calling for tougher quarantine measures which is exactly what this government imposed as soon as we became aware of the new variant.”
Johnson also accused Starmer of wanting the UK to be part of the European medicines agency.
He told MPs: “If we had listened to him we would still be at the starting blocks because he wanted to stay in the European medicines agency and said so four times from that despatch box.”
The claim led to an exchange of words between the two leaders after Prime Minister’s Questions was over but a Labour MP who was present during the confrontation said rumours of an argument were “absolute bollocks”.
