Do not enforce a compulsory quarantine on people arriving in the UK

Instead, the Government should focus on increasing testing capabilities, ensuring hospitals and care homes are well equipped, and helping businesses and individuals gradually resume their activities so the economy can start recovering.

The damage this extreme and all-encompassing measure could cause could far outweigh any potential benefits.

The hospitality industry is already struggling with thousands of jobs at risk and many businesses on the brink of collapse.

Enforcing a compulsory quarantine so late in the fight against coronavirus is counterproductive. Tourism and business travellers are key to relaunching the economy. Imposing a self-quarantine significantly reduces incoming travel with catastrophic consequences.

Effective from 8 June, border health measures have been in place for entering the UK. The rules cover UK residents and visitors. Passengers need to provide journey and contact details when travelling to the UK and are not allowed to leave the place they are staying for the first 14 days (self-isolation) except in very limited situations. As public health matters are devolved, the Government worked closely with the Devolved Administrations to build a four nations approach, and broadly equivalent measures were introduced by the administrations in each of the nations on the same date.

The Joint Biosecurity Centre (JBC), in close consultation with Public Health England (PHE) and the Chief Medical Officer, has developed an approach to assessing the public health risk associated with inbound travel from specific countries and territories. The resulting categorisation methodology has been informed by a number of factors including an estimate of the proportion of the population that is currently infectious in each country, trends in virus incidences and deaths, transmission status and international epidemic intelligence. We have also considered issues such as the testing capacity of each country and the quality of the data available. Data has been used from official sources in each country and modelling by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, as well as from Public Health England and the National Travel Health Network and Centre. Other data sources may be used in the future.

On 29 June the Government confirmed that it would shortly begin to ease the health measures at the UK border, allowing passengers to be exempted from self-isolation requirements in certain circumstances on arrival in the UK. This would apply to people arriving on all forms of transport. On 6 July the Government set out plans in more detail to end the self-isolation requirement for arrivals from certain countries and territories into England, where the risk of importing Covid-19 is sufficiently low. These measures came into force on 10 July following amendments to the regulations. The list of country exemptions remains under review and the Government has added further countries to the list where it has been safe to do so.