In Coming Months ‘People Will Realise How Bad the Damage to the Economy Has Been’, Commentator Says

© REUTERS / Toby MelvilleOPINION

According to the new coronavirus restrictions, foreign travellers who disobey the forthcoming UK quarantine rules could be deported. The rules set out by Home Secretary Priti Patel on Wednesday have caused unease in the Tory ranks and been condemned by businesses.

Robin Tilbrook, a political commentator and chairman of the English Democrats, has shared his views on the matter.  

Sputnik: After months of inaction, the government has finally introduced new coronavirus laws that restrict travellers entering the UK. What do you make of these new proposals and what do they represent, in your eyes?

Robin Tilbrook: Well to me it’s completely extraordinary that rather than introduce quarantining right at the beginning of the spread of the disease that instead the government chose to lock all of our citizens down and destroy our economy, whereas the obvious thing to do was to quarantine in the first place. One of the interesting things to reflect on is that, actually, Priti Patel herself did call for quarantining right at the beginning of all of this and Boris Johnson had a row with her and refused to do it.

Sputnik: Businesses have been quick to condemn these new laws passed by the government as they feel they aren’t targeted enough and will restrict business operations. Are they right to suggest this? Could these new guidelines be ineffective to public health and problematic for UK firms?

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Robin Tilbrook: Yes, I mean it’s at completely the wrong time. I mean, when quarantining is effective is to prevent the disease getting into the country in the first place or to restrict the numbers that come in. I think it was The Guardian that published something a few weeks ago showing that actually, in the period between 1 January and 23 March, when Boris announced the lockdown, the government had actually, by not doing any quarantining, allowed over 80 million international travellers to come into the country without any quarantining, without any testing and also from places where it was known that there was a widespread outbreak of the coronavirus.

But now, when the horse isn’t so much bolted, but the entire stables empty, the government suddenly announces that it’s going to start quarantining, when the disease has run its course. That, I’m sure, is more about protecting their own backsides than it is about actually doing any good. From the medical point of view, I can’t see any justification for doing quarantining at the end of the outbreak rather than at the beginning

Sputnik: When we look at other nations in Europe, Asia, the Americas, and so on, we’re starting to see countries come out of lockdown and scale back restrictive laws. In Britain’s case, we’re exiting lockdown and introducing laws which many countries are seeking to ditch. Is this a case of too little too late from the UK?

Robin Tilbrook: Well, it’s just completely the wrong way around, isn’t it? When you’ve got a disease spreading across the world, you would expect any sensible decision maker would be thinking “how can we try and prevent it getting into this country?” And of course, if you look at New Zealand, for example, they did exactly that. They prevented people coming into New Zealand and they’ve had virtually no outbreak.

Australia also did something quite similar and they’ve got theirs under control. In terms of the attitude to the whole overreaction of lockdown, we actually saw the prime minister of Norway a couple of days ago apologising for panicking and for introducing lockdown. I do think the British government and Boris’ government are going to find it quite difficult to explain why they panicked and why they basically have destroyed the economy. Over the course of next few months, people will realise just how bad the damage to the economy has been and lots of businesses that we took for granted will never come back again.

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