Nicola Sturgeon lashes out at Boris Johnson’s plan for ‘traffic light’ travel

Nicola Sturgeon today lashed out at Boris Johnson’s plan for a ‘traffic light’ system for travel from May 17 – warning ‘lax’ rules could allow variants to spread.

The Scottish First Minister said allowing people to go abroad for non-essential reasons ‘poses a risk’ because it is impossible to know where a dangerous mutant strain might emerge.

She said she is pushing the UK government to take a harder line, pointing out that alongside the ban on foreign arrivals Scotland currently requires all British residents returning from overseas to self-isolate in a quarantine hotel. In England the restrictions only apply to a ‘red list’.

Her comments came as the PM prepares to travel to India, where a new variant of coronavirus has been identified.

The government’s plan is for countries to be classed as either green, amber or red from next month – depending on the threat they pose of fuelling the pandemic. 

Ms Sturgeon, speaking on the Sophy Ridge On Sunday programme on Sky News, ackowledged that the India strain was currently classed as a ‘variant of interest’ rather than a variant of concern’.

But she said: ‘I think the thing we have got to recognise about Covid is that it is mutating and we are seeing new variants appear in different parts of the world.

‘We don’t know where the variants of real concern are going to come from, which is why an approach to travel that tries to categorise risk, with some countries categorised as red-list countries and other countries deemed to be safer, I think poses a risk.

‘Because none of us know right now where the next variant that might be really problematic is going to occur.’

Ms Sturgeon insisted: ‘We have got to be very careful as we continue to suppress things at home, we don’t allow it to be reseeded with more dangerous variants from elsewhere.’

She insisted that last summer Scotland had ‘almost eliminated the strains that were circulating’.

But she said ‘we probably opened up international travel too quickly, so we allowed the virus to reseed into our domestic population’.

Ms Sturgeon added: ‘I think it is important we try as hard as we can to avoid that in the weeks and months ahead.’

She accepted that such an approach is ‘really difficult for the aviation sector, airports, tourism’ – saying theses businesses need to be supported.

But she was clear: ‘The big risk that we face, not just in Scotland but across the UK right now is the importation of new variants of the virus, variants that might be faster spreading, that might be more severe and crucially variants that might undermine the efficacy of the vaccine.

‘So we’ve got to be very careful about that.

‘Which is why I think one of the restrictions we’re all going to have to live with for longer is a restriction on international travel.

‘In Scotland we insist that people quarantine in managed isolation wherever in the world they come from if they come directly into Scotland, and we continue to try to persuade the UK Government to take a similar approach.

‘Because we mustn’t allow the progress we are making domestically to be undermined by too lax a position on international travel.

‘It is very difficult for the sector and it is important governments support it as we try to continue to protect ourselves against the virus.’

Environment Secretary George Eustice said it is ‘appropriate’ for Mr Johnson to go ahead with a visit to India later this month, insisting steps will be taken to ensure it is ‘Covid secure’.

But the UK government is reviewing whether India should be added to the UK’s travel red list as cases soar, driven by a new variant that has already arrived in Britain.

Mr Eustice told the BBC’s Andrew Marr that the travel red list is kept under ‘constant review’ – but gave no indication that guidance might be changed.

Scientists fear that India’s brutal second wave of Covid is being driven by a double-mutated version of the virus that makes vaccines less effective and the disease more infectious.

Danny Altmann, a professor of infectious disease at Imperial College London, has warned that the country should immediately be added to the travel red list to protect Britons from the variant.

But on Sunday, Mr Eustice said: ‘We’re allowing people in from India provided they have had a pre-departure test, provided they then quarantine – albeit not in a hotel or a designated facility, but quarantine at home – and then have a test at two and eight days. 

‘But we keep this under regular review. We take the advice of the scientific experts on this. If the advice is we should change that and move to the red list we would.’