June 26, 2021 - 8:55am
Matt Hancock said last week that the reason why the government was maintaining the quarantine requirement on those arriving from amber or red countries who are fully vaccinated was that “when only half the population has been offered the jab then it is not fair in many ways to offer extra freedoms for some”. Grant Shapps repeated that line on the Today programme yesterday, pointing out that some people can’t be vaccinated or can’t prove that they have been (for example, if they have been vaccinated abroad).
However, the government’s powers to impose isolation or quarantine depend, like almost all government powers, on the statute that confers them. The statute here is the Public Health (Control of Disease) Act 1984. Section 45B of that Act — the power that the government relies on — gives Ministers the power to make regulations that provide for the “isolation or quarantine of persons”. But, for present purposes, that power can be used only for the purpose of “preventing danger to public health”.
So, when working out whether the government is acting lawfully by maintaining the current quarantine requirements on the double vaccinated, the only relevant question is whether they are maintained in order to prevent danger to public health. If the scientific evidence is that people who have been double-vaccinated for at least two weeks cannot catch or transmit Covid, and if people can prove that status in a reliable way (as everyone who can download the NHS app can), then it is impossible to see how it “prevents danger to public health” to make those people isolate or quarantine for up to 10 days after arriving from abroad.
The scientific evidence may not, of course be as clear as that. There may be some risk — though, since the requirement seriously interferes with a number of rights protected by the Human Rights Act, the risk would have to be a real one in order to justify that interference.
But the government’s central problem is that it isn’t relying on any such risk: rather, it’s relying on the claim that it isn’t fair to allow some people but not others the freedom to travel abroad and to return home without quarantine. That, though, misses the legal point. It isn’t fair that some people pose much less of a Covid risk than others. But, when using these public health powers, risk is the only thing that matters.
The government has, so far, managed to defend its Covid restrictions in the courts (though the Scottish government lost a case about closure of places of worship). Its powers are very wide. But they still have to be used for a purpose fitting within the terms of the statute. So if Ministers trying to justify not relaxing these restrictions on the double-vaccinated can’t do better than “it wouldn’t be fair”, they may well find themselves at the wrong end of a judicial review.
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SubscribeWhat make sense at all.. there are still too many people convinced there has been a pandemic whereas there has not.. British people must listen to what is said in other countries about vaccines. How difficult it is to see that is a plan.. a very bad one. Unfortunately there is so much cover-up here… Why not make a start with the Evidence Based Medicine Consultancy:Urgent Preliminary Yellow Card Report on Data up to 26 May 2021.. I know one thing, all is done and said is a massive lie and manipulation.. wake up and defend your family, country and freedom..
A judicial review of how governments are taking advantage of statutes and nonsensical ministerial orders is certainly in order. It’s become glaringly clear that the “servants of the people” are there to serve themselves. Time for class-action suit.
Another complete nonsense is the silly labelling of countries Green Red etc. If someone from a red Country can visit a Green Country you are visiting. Say a Russian standing in the bar next to you in Malta- then defining travel permit by labelling countries is pointless.
Inevitably there are those who are making money out of the madness. A colleague in France recounted how he was obliged to go to GB for family reasons. It cost him the proverbial ‘arm and a leg’ in tests both ways….Meanwhile the Swiss are taking a pragmatic approach: those who aren’t vaccinated don’t get to travel. Indeed in certain sectors (care and hospitality) those who refuse to get vaccinated risk losing their jobs.
Eh? Swiss people can travel without being vaccinated. I am traveling from Switzerland without a vaccine at the moment. No problem, they just require proof of a test.
“But, when using these public health powers, risk is the only thing that matters.”
OK, but what does ‘Risk’ mean? Well we know that like Lewis Carroll’s Humpty Dumpty it means what they say it means.
Lewis Carroll Quotes:, “When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’
’The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.’
’The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master — that’s all.””
But my feel is the ‘Covid Response’ after the first 6 weeks to flatten the sombrero is pure ulterior motives and is NOT about health excepting some ‘Chicken Little’ advisors, and they were put prominently as they gave credence to the policy desired. Which is Absolute control of the people, laws, and money.
That, as the writer so ably points out, even this quasi legal basis of control is now being flouted, and the fact sheer authoritarianism is now the law of the land, is clear. ‘Your Papers Please’, that mainstay of the old WWII movies as the sign of ultimate terror of government enforcers, is now to be the law of the land is being accepted, and a PPE curtain is descending across the once free world.
Why test at all when people have been fully vaccinated? I’m a dual U.K./Canadian citizen and am booked to go and see my mother and brothers in Canada who I’ve missed desperately for the past 18 months, with two trips already cancelled due to ever shifting lockdown and quarantine rules there and here. I’m going (I hope!) in a few weeks because Canada has removed the hotel quarantine requirement (KA-CHING! $$$) for its returning citizens as long as they’re fully vaccinated (progress but why discriminate against other nationals also fully vaxxed?). I’ll still have to have a negative PCR test before leaving the U.K.; another on arrival in Canada (where at least they’re free at the airport) and another two at cost before leaving Canada and when I get back … followed by 10 days quarantine in the U.K. This ‘phased approach’ to reopening international travel is nothing more than government virtue signalling to voters with the enhanced and irrational fears of the outside world they’ve managed to instil since March 2020. Everywhere and anyone coming from ‘out there’ is perceived by such people as being unclean. This goes as much for Canadians as it does British people – both governments (and their provincial and devolved assemblies) have manufactured an irrational fear of the outside world which is essentially xenophobic. So counterproductive for a country of immigrants like Canada and a country priding itself to be at the heart of global commerce, finance and aviation like the U.K.
Canada and the ANZACs have gone absolutely mad in this covid lockdown insanity. That their economies are all based on digging up, or growing, things from their bounteous land means they can survive the madness of self isolation – But WHY? (Canada, NZ and Aus all locked their borders completely and hid inside, allowed no one either in or out for a year + so far!)
They fought with such amazing courage in Gallipoli and North Africa and the Trenches and Burma and basically distinguished themselves for extreme valor in every conflict, to then turn into such complete and utter Pu*s ies is inexplicable to me.
I offer you two words which crystallise what you say: Justin ‘hairspray’ Trudeau (sorry, that’s three). An emptier vessel has rarely led a country.
Why test people who are fully vaccinated? Because the vaccine was not designed to protect anyone from disease, only to reduce symptoms. Indeed, the stage 2 trials only showed 1% absolute efficacy on self-reported symptoms and in the Pfeizer trials, that was after 200 who had taken the vaccine had been removed from the data set for some unexplained reason. This is not a vaccine like for measles or the oft referred to yellow fever which are designed to prevent disease. Why do people keep forgetting this?
So is the intent to confine us to our respective national barracks in perpetuity?
This somewhat misses the point. Putting to one side the argument that covid is allegedly a danger to public health for one moment. I believe that anyone who provides a negative test result has already proven that they are NOT a risk to public health as they return from holiday and once back inside the country provide no greater a risk than any other citizen. The vaccine was not designed to prevent disease or transmission so under the Public Health Act, they cannot give unfair advantages to those who have been double jabbed but I believe that they are exceeding their authority and that there is a test case to be had to prove this when they endeavour to justify isolation or quarantine on those who have tested negative
The WHO’s general recommendations for international travel and closing borders, at least those issued pre-pandemic, were that restrictions are basically ineffective in stopping the spread of viruses. They can only slow it down for a few weeks allowing authorities time to put their pandemic contingency plans into effect. The thing is, a few weeks would not have been enough considering the abysmal levels of preparedness in Europe and the non-recognition of China as a hot-spot for further spreading. If the Covid-19 virus pandemic had similar mortality rates as SARS or H5N1 Avian flu then border closures and quarantine may have been appropriate, but this virus and the variants have been closer to serious flu epidemics in terms of mortalities and not 20-30% mortalities for those infected, probably with the healthier younger generations being affected rather than those mainly in death’s waiting room.
The government’s travel restrictions and quarantine seem to assume that all daily arrivals at our airports and ports have high levels of infection whilst no-one leaves the country taking the infection with them. Departure/arrival boards at all airports are fairly well balanced, just as many departures as arrivals, and if community spreading is in general fairly similar within Europe, even allowing for infection curves varying in time, then there should be no need for restrictions and definitely not quarantine. In the worst case quarantine could be replaced by voluntary social distancing and isolation without the need for house arrest.
I’ve been lucky enough to live in the only country in Europe which is handling the situation according to the WHO textbook but my irritation at not being able to visit my 2nd home in the UK for the last 16 months has passed breaking point a long time ago, not to mention ruining my planned lifestyle after 45 years grafting in the IT industry.