Covid: Priti Patel admits government should have closed UK borders in March

  • Video report by ITV News Political Correspondent Libby Wiener

Home Secretary Priti Patel has admitted the government should have closed the UK's borders to protect against coronavirus in March last year - 10 months before Boris Johnson eventually did.

In a video recording, obtained by pro-Tory website Guido Fawkes, Ms Patel said: "On ‘should we have closed our borders earlier’ the answer is yes, I was an advocate of closing them last March.”

Despite claiming to have advocated for borders to close months ago, Ms Patel has publicly defended the government's decision not to enact a full arrivals shutdown.

Her remarks were reportedly made during a Zoom call between the home secretary the Conservative Friends of India group, according to Guido Fawkes.

The PM was quizzed at Prime Minister's Questions by Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer about why he chose to "overrule" the home secretary when she called for border closures.

But the Tory leader evaded the question on Wednesday, instead opting to criticise Labour's own policy on border controls.

All travel corridors have now been suspended. Credit: PA

Mr Johnson said: "I think it was last March that (Sir Keir) along with many others was actually saying that we didn't need to close borders but as usual Captain Hindsight has changed his tune to suit events."

He argued that the UK had now "instituted one of the toughest border regimes in the world" with its insistence that travellers have a negative test before arrival and then self-isolate for a period.

There have been calls throughout the pandemic for the UK's borders to be closed, however the government resisted pressure to do so until last Friday, when it announced all travel corridors were being scrapped and a negative coronavirus test would be required before entry was permitted.

In mid-March, the UK abandoned asking people to quarantine for two weeks after arriving from areas with high infection rates, such as Hubei province in China and Italy.

The decision was in contrast to many other countries, such as New Zealand, which has been widely praised for getting the pandemic under control, partly through strict quarantine measures for arrivals.

While Ms Patel says she advocated for borders to close in March, in April both Health Secretary Matt Hancock and Deputy Chief Medical Officer Jonathan Van-Tam rubbished the idea as something that would be ineffective.

Asked at an April 10 press conference about the risk of international arrivals bringing Covid-19 with them, Matt Hancock used the US and Italy as examples of places where border closures had not worked.

Professor Van-Tam said border closures "would not work as a measure to prevent the ingress of coronavirus into the UK".

Quarantines for most international arrivals were brought in, in June and "travel corridors", with countries deemed to have safe levels of infection, were established a month later.

But on Friday the PM suspended travel corridors and announced a negative coronavirus test result would be required before entry to the UK could be permitted.

Self-isolation for up to 10 days after entering the UK is also a condition of entry.

Mr Johnson said he took action to effectively close the borders to protect vaccine rollout and stop the arrival of new variants to the UK.

He told a Downing Street press conference: “It’s precisely because we have the hope of that vaccine and the risk of new strains coming from overseas that we must take additional steps now to stop those strains from entering the country."

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