Government faces backlash over ‘half-baked’ hotel quarantine plans
Ministers have faced a deluge of backlash over “half-baked” plans to introduce a mandatory hotel quarantine for arrivals to the UK, with some MPs calling the scheme “too little too late”.
The Prime Minister earlier this week said the government was drawing up plans to introduce a mandatory 10-night hotel quarantine on arrivals to Britain from 30 “red list” countries at risk of carrying both the South African and Brazilian Covid mutations.
Number 10 subsequently U-turned on Boris Johnson’s promise that further details would be announced yesterday, saying the scheme would be outlined “in the coming days”.
But leaked documents last night revealed the scheme will not come into place until 15 February — 49 days after the discovery of the South Afrian variant was first announced to the public.
Ministers expect that more than 1,000 British residents will return from places where new variants are prevalent each day, and are understood to be racing to reserve 28,000 hotel rooms across the UK by 5pm this evening.
It is expected the government will pay the estimated £55m bill up front but then attempt to recoup the money from passengers, according to the Telegraph.
‘Half-baked’
But the last-minute confusion has attracted steep criticism from business leaders in the tourism industry and opposition MPs.
The shadow home secretary, Nick Thomas-Symonds, said the scheme was “half-baked” as hotel chains said they had been kept in the dark about the plans.
“It’s now over six weeks since the South African strain was discovered and yet there is almost no reliable quarantine system in place,” he said, adding that the delay was “putting people at risk”.
“As ever with this government, it is too little, too late,” he said.
Foreign Office minister James Cleverly insisted the government would give hotel chains notice of the plans, telling BBC’s Today programme: “We are making sure we are giving the hospitality industry an appropriate amount of time to get ready for this policy.”
Cleverly also accused Labour of being “naive”, adding: “This is part of a package of measures, no individual measure will help resolve this. The idea of Labour picking one particular silver bullet solution to what is a complicated situation is naive.”
But hotel chiefs have said there has been “no dialogue” with the government, and warned that they will need more time than the 10-day notice period until the scheme comes into place.
Meher Nawab, the chief executive of London Hotel Group, told BBC Breakfast: “There has been no open dialogue between the hospitality sector and the government.”
“There is a lot of training to go into this, a lot of health protocols as well, and actually the insurance has to be approved. If you want to do something properly, and the amount of due diligence and protocol that has to go into place, it takes a long time.”