Welsh first minister criticises UK’s Covid quarantine plan

The Welsh first minister has strongly criticised the UK government’s quarantine plan, claiming it represents another example of Boris Johnson’s administration doing the “bare minimum” at each stage of the Covid crisis.

Mark Drakeford said he worried that Wales and the rest of the UK could be exposed to new variants from across the globe unless stronger action to tighten the border was taken.

In an interview with the Guardian, Drakeford said: “What ought to happen is the mirror image of what the UK government is doing. The UK government has an approach in which the world can come to the UK apart from a red list of countries who will have to observe quarantine.

“I would have done it the other way round. I would have had the default position that anyone coming into the UK would be expected to quarantine and then you would have had exceptions for countries where you were confident that was not required.”

Drakeford added that all the way through the pandemic the UK government “has done the least it can get away with rather than the most it should.

“When a new variant happens somewhere in the world that is not on the list of 33 countries people will have travelled here and the variant will be here and we will hear again the sound of the stable door being shut after the horse has bolted.”

Drakeford argued there was little the Welsh government could do unilaterally. “If we try to institute a system of that nature for Cardiff airport alone that will simply displace people to travel to an airport across our border. I continue to make the case that a four- or five-nation approach [including Ireland] is needed. We should all build the wall higher to prevent the hard work that people in Wales and elsewhere have done to drive down infection being undermined.”

Drakeford expressed hope that as long as infections continued to fall in Wales restrictions could be eased. “If things continue to improve by Easter we will be restoring freedoms to people that we have had to deny them during lockdown. But there’s a fragility about that. We can’t be certain that things will continue to improve because this has been a virus full of unpleasant surprises.”

The seven-day infection rate in Wales has dropped below 130 per 100,000 people, compared with more than 600 before Christmas when the country went into another lockdown. After a slow start, Wales’s vaccination programme has gathered pace and some pupils will return to primary schools after half-term.