First Minister slams UK quarantine plans; Nicola Sturgeon won't be hurried on signing up to 'air bridge' deal
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The UK government’s handling of a plan for quarantine-free travel has been branded “shambolic” by Scotland's First Minister Nicola Sturgeon.
At today's Scottish Government briefing she said the prevalence of Covid-19 in Scotland is five times lower than in England and while alignment with the rest of the UK was desirable and Scotland could sign up to an "air bridge" plan involving countries deemed as low-risk, there would be more of a problem with those labelled medium-risk.
With higher rates of infection than Scotland, she said, such a move could reverse gains made in the fight against Covid-19.
She hit out at claims that Scotland was deliberately holding up agreement for the air bridges scheme, saying the Scottish Government had been given less than a day to consider the proposed travel list.
The First Minister said: "As you know the UK government has announced a list of countries that it intends to remove from quarantine restrictions in relation to travel to England from July 10.
"I explained yesterday some of the reasons why it has been really quite challenging for Scotland to come to a position with any speed.
"We have often had limited or no notice of the UK's proposals, and that matters because some of the judgments involved here are difficult and complex.
"Just to illustrate the point about the shifting sands of the UK government's position – the list of countries that they were yesterday demanding that the (Scottish) government sign-up to – and suggesting that we were a barrier to getting an agreement on – is not the same as the list they have shared with us today.
"Let me be unequivocal about this – we want to welcome visitors again from around the world, and of course we also want to allow our own citizens to travel. That's important for our tourism sector, it is important for our aviation sector and it's important for our economy generally.
"But we must make sure we can open up our country again safely and we absolutely must make sure that the decisions we take don't put at risk the progress that we have made in tackling Covid-19.
"As levels of the virus here in Scotland reduce one of the key risks we have to manage is the possibility of new cases of the virus coming in to Scotland from outside, and that risk is greater when people who might be coming to Scotland from countries where the virus is still more prevalent than it now is at home.
"For example, we assess that prevalence of the virus in Scotland right now is five times lower than in England, and Northern Ireland faces a similar issue.
"So that means that there may well be cases where the UK government is admitting visitors to England without quarantine from countries that don't present a significant risk of infection levels there, but would create that risk in Scotland.
"We will hopefully conclude the process of consideration over the next couple of days and announce our decisions quickly, but I wanted to set out a number of reasons why we are not immediately agreeing to a list of countries that the UK government has proposed.
"In the meantime, if you're desperate to book a summer holiday – and if you are that would be entirely understandable – why don't you think about booking it in Scotland this year and giving some support to our own tourism sector at a time when they have probably never needed that support more?"
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