A senior SNP government minister refused to rule out checks on road borders with England if the UK Government does not tighten its international quarantine proposals.
First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said last week that plans by the UK Government for a “managed quarantine” system for travellers from certain countries do not go far enough, as she announced Scotland will do the same for all travellers.
Today, health secretary Jeane Freeman said more action may need to be taken in Scotland if the rules aren’t tightened south of the border.
“Those are difficult issues, partly because we’ve got individuals who work in Scotland and live just over the border and vice-versa, and of course there will always be exemptions for haulage traffic, but we need to continue to talk that through with the UK Government,” she told BBC Radio Scotland.
When asked if there could be checks on the border with England if restrictions are not tightened by the UK Government, she added: “I’m not saying yes and I’m not saying no. What I’m saying is, those discussions need to continue to see what more we can do, if we can’t persuade the UK Government to take the tough, clinically-led approach that we are taking, then we need to work with them to identify how can we then continue to protect Scotland to the maximum level.”
Earlier this week, Boris Johnson refused to shut UK borders despite Sturgeon saying Scotland will quarantine all international arrivals in hotels.
There are a tiny number of daily direct international direct flights to Scotland compared to 21,000 passenger arrivals across the United Kingdom.
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.
Starmer said on Wednesday: “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 defended his plans, claiming expert advisers did not recommend a complete ban. "They say that travel bans should not be relied upon to stop importation of new variants," Johnson added.
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.
