This punitive quarantine is unenforceable

Imposing stricter rules than for lockdown on returning tourists brings the law into disrepute

Holidaymakers in France who wouldn’t, or couldn’t, join the race to curtail their trips and get on the last flight – or boat – home are now digesting the full horror of UK quarantine measures. Many will have assumed that the restrictions on their activities would be similar to those applied in lockdown back in March and April, when the pandemic was at its height and everyone was urged to stay at home. Working remotely if you could, shopping only for essentials, going out for exercise: not much fun but manageable, particularly for those with desk-based jobs. Anyway, a holiday in France, where Covid rates and containment policies looked very similar to our own, seemed safe enough. Indeed, for those British travellers heading for rural France the risk of contracting Covid looked lower than on the crowded streets and beaches of Bournemouth or St Ives.

But the Government, having last month enjoined us to go ahead with our European holidays, doesn’t see it that way. A visit to Brittany is now considered as hazardous as a trip to Sao Paulo, and quarantine restrictions make lockdown look like a picnic by comparison. After completing, to the best of their ability, a set of baffling and bureaucratic forms about their plans and contact details for the next two weeks, returning holidaymakers are being told to go home and stay there, with no exceptions. Quarantine is, in effect, house arrest. It doesn’t mean “work from home if you can”; it means “you must not go to work”. It doesn’t mean “take exercise once a day”; it means “don’t go out”. No shopping, even for essentials. If you need food or medication, ask a neighbour. No dog-walking allowed. If you break the rules you’ll be subject to fines of up to £1,000.

Given the information now available about the probable conditions for transmission of Covid, forbidding returning holidaymakers from walking the dog, or driving to the supermarket to pick up a click-andcollect order of groceries, seems wildly disproportionate. With Greece and Croatia potentially joining Spain and France on the “red list”, thousands of UK citizens could be facing a fortnight of confinement. This seems entirely at odds with the Government’s supposed strategy of containing infection through more sophisticated, targeted measures which are meant to enable “normal” life to resume.

Yet in deciding when to put countries under travel restrictions, the Government has used an extremely blunt instrument. The “science-led” benchmark is countries where 20 people in 100,000 test positive for the virus. But such a benchmark does not take account of the possibility that countries carrying out more tests are likely to come up with more positive results. Unless hospital admissions and death rates from Covid are also rising, the figures are largely meaningless.

Sadly, the arbitrary measures being applied to overseas travel seem all too typical of this Government’s confused and panicky response to the virus. Urged on by the scientists, schools were forced to cancel all exams this summer when, with political will and some careful planning, it would have been possible to carry them out in socially distanced conditions. Employees are being urged to return to their places of work – yet are still supposed to avoid public transport and keep two metres apart. Try reading the latest regulations and you’ll end up so baffled that it seems easier to do nothing. How does the Government imagine that anything like normal life can resume in this climate of uncertainty and confusion?

As to the draconian post-holiday quarantine rules, it’s hard to see how they can possibly be enforced. Will the police mount a countrywide campaign, stopping and questioning anyone who looks as if they might have been abroad lately? In practice, and based on enforcement rates to date, the likelihood is that the law will be flouted. But making unenforceable threats based on illogical demands will rapidly bring the law into disrepute and leave the Government struggling to be taken seriously.

As testing improves, rates in this country may well exceed 20 in 100,000. What then? Will everyone in Britain be put under house arrest? We have to learn to live with this virus for the foreseeable future; imposing arbitrary rules will only damage public confidence and dampen any hope of social and economic recovery.