FM under fire over quarantine checking delay

Sturgeon admits she would have liked scrutiny to start sooner, while aviation industry says ‘hugely damaging’ policy left recovery plans ‘stifled unnecessarily’

Nicola Sturgeon admitted she would have liked Covid-19 quarantine checks on people returning to Scotland to have started earlier, as the delay was attacked by the aviation industry.

Ms Sturgeon said checks were to begin shortly following the weekend revelation that none had been carried out despite the quarantine requirement being in force for four weeks.

At her daily coronavirus briefing, Ms Sturgeon also said she hoped regulations determining which countries are to be exempted from quarantine requirements would be in place by the end of the week.

The Scottish Government is still deciding which countries to form “air bridges” that will allow holiday-makers returning to Scotland to be excused going into quarantine for 14 days.

The UK Government announced 59 air bridge countries last week, but Ms Sturgeon’s administration refused to endorse the list without carrying out its own research.

The delay has angered airport chiefs including Derek Provan, chief executive of AGS Airports, which owns and manages Aberdeen, Glasgow and Southampton airports.

Mr Provan said: “We said at the outset that a blanket quarantine policy would be ineffective, unworkable and hugely damaging to our sector and the wider economy. Since it was put in place, thousands of jobs within our aviation and tourism sectors have been lost and the fact the policy has not even been enforced means our recovery plans have been stifled unnecessarily.”

The first minister said work on a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to allow data to flow from the Home Office to Public Health Scotland (PHS) is under way.

There had been some issues with the quality of the data and the final version of the MOU had been received by PHS at the end of last week.

Ms Sturgeon added that there was “nothing to suggest there is not high compliance with this system”.

On the issue of air bridges, Ms Sturgeon confirmed it was “highly likely” the UK Government’s list of low-risk countries would be adopted by Scotland.

Scottish Conservative leader Jackson Carlaw accused the first minister of “dragging her feet”looking for others to blame on the quarantine checks delay.

“The SNP’s deceit on this matter has been exposed,” he said.

Nicola Sturgeon said Covid-19 quarantine checking would begin shortly.