Quarantine policy labelled ‘chaotic’ as just one person fined
Humza Yousaf has been criticised for not being“on top of his brief ” as his policy on quarantining travellers arriving into Scotland was blasted as “chaotic”.
The justice secretary appeared before the health and sport committee in the Scottish Parliament yesterday, but was unable to answer several questions about the enforcement of the quarantine policy.
His appearance was slammed as“disrespectfu land a waste of everyone’ s time” by Scottish Labour justice spokesman James Kelly.
Among the questions Mr Yousaf failed to provide statistics for included the number of travellers who had breached restrictions, the numb er of people inter viewed by Police Scotland, or how much enforcement action had been carried out by the police in relation to quarantine restrictions.
Only one person has been served with a fixed pen alty notice for breaching the restrictions, namely Celtic footballer Boli Bolingoli after he returned from Spain and did not quarantine.
Responding during the committee to questions from MSP David Stewart, Mr Yousaf said there was no“expectation” the police would be knocking on the doors of ever y traveller who was meant to be quarantined as “we do not live in a police state”.
He said :“Police Scotland’ s role in this is reactive. There’s no expectation from me and neither has the expectation ever been publicly that Police Scotland would be knocking the door of every single person that should be quarantining.
“That was never the intention, never the implication and certainly never the insinuation.”
Mr Stewart criticised the policy and Mr Yousaf in a tense exchange, saying: “There’s a famous American expression ‘if it waddles and it quacks, it’s a duck’. One enforcement action, but all these people in quarantine is frankly, I think, quite ridiculous in terms of enforcement.”
The justice secretary said the number of people being contacted for spot checks as to whether they were following the rules were still below the 20 percent target, but above the 450 per week ceiling promised by the Scottish Government.
He said any increase in the number of people contacted would require an increase in the resources available to test and protect teams.
Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Willie Rennie said: “The justice secretary’s position on contacting people under quarantine order is chaotic and his targets are volatile.”