Quarter of people meant to isolate after arriving in the UK are not checked for compliance
Up to a quarter of people who are meant to isolate at home when entering the UK from abroad do not get checked on by the authorities, the Home Office has admitted.
In a letter to MP Yvette Cooper, chair of the Home Affairs Select Committee, home secretary Priti Patel admitted that for the week ending 1 March just 75 per cent of those potentially eligible to be contacted by the Isolation Assurance Service (IAS) were successfully contacted.
The admission means a quarter of those who should have been isolating at home were not checked upon.
In the latter, Patel said that of the 75,807 people who entered the country that week and were potentially eligible to be contacted by the IAC, 13 per cent were not contactable for a number of reasons including because they fell into a sectoral exemption, or were non-eligible for sampling.
For the remainder, Patel said where the IAC is concerned that the contact is not self-isolating or cannot be reached, the case will be referred to the Border Force Criminal Justice Unit, which identifies the relevant police force to take some “limited quality assurance to ensure the police have sufficient information to undertake their compliance checks and where necessary enforcement.”
The rules around travel and isolation exist to minimise the chances of a traveller bringing a mutant variant of Covid-19 to the UK.
Those arriving from ‘red list’ countries are required to enter the government’s managed quarantine facilities.
Those entering England from non-red list countries – assuming they have not entered a red list country in the previous 10 days – may quarantine where they are staying during their time in the UK.
It is currently illegal to travel abroad for holidays.
In response to the letter Yvette Cooper told The Guardian: “The letter is confirmation that a quarter of international arrivals who aren’t going into mandatory quarantine are not contactable when they go home to self-isolate. It is also an astonishing admission that in thousands of cases where home isolation rules are being broken, no further enforcement action is taking place
“Given that only one per cent of international arrivals are going into quarantine hotels, a properly enforced home quarantine system is vital to prevent new variants from spreading, and will be integral to any traffic light system the government announces for the summer.”