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Yvette Cooper Profile picture
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14 May, 9 tweets, 3 min read
1/ Government is now warning us about local lockdowns or delays lifting restrictions because of the India variant. But why did they let this happen?

Three times Government has made major errors on Covid border measures which worsened pandemic. Why don’t they learn?

A thread 👇🏼
2/ Spring 2020. Almost every other country in the world introduced proper border restrictions or quarantine. The UK did the opposite, lifting even the voluntary self-isolation guidance for some travellers on 13 March so we had nothing in place committees.parliament.uk/publications/2…
3/ In mid-March experts estimated that up to 10,000 Covid cases arrived in UK when we had no testing or quarantine in place. Sir Patrick Vallance said travellers returning from holidays in Europe led to a “big influx of cases” & meant pandemic accelerated
4/ Summer 2020. Govt finally introduced some restrictions in June, then lifted them for Europe in July, then partially introduced them again. But there were major gaps including no real enforcement of home quarantine. In September we got a second surge of cases...
5/ Travel to Europe accounted for 85.9% of imported cases last summer. Those cases mainly came from so-called ‘green’ holiday destinations with no restrictions in place but there was also minimal enforcement of home quarantine itv.com/news/2021-03-1…
Winter 2020/21. Govt was warned about serious potential risks from new variants that cd reverse progress or undermine vaccine programme. Yet measures on the South Africa & Brazil variants were only introduced under pressure & after delays. Govt was warned not to keep delaying
7/ Spring 2020. Govt warned about India variant – cases had been rapidly rising there since February – but inexplicably delayed putting India on red list til 23 April after which many thousands of people had returned from India bringing in many hundreds of new variant cases
8/ When they did finally add India to red list – 2 weeks after they’d added Pakistan on 9 April – they gave travellers 4 days’ notice to rush back. Why didn’t they introduce additional testing for those travellers before they were able to get on public transport home?
9/ Over 1,000 India variant cases identified already in UK and Government is warning AGAIN about local lockdowns. THIS WAS PREDICTABLE BUT IT WAS NOT INEVITABLE. Over a year on from the start of this pandemic and the Govt has still not learned the basic lessons at the border

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More from @YvetteCooperMP

Yvette Cooper Profile picture
24 Feb
99% of people arriving in country are not going into hotel quarantine. Evidence from Home Office to @CommonsHomeAffs this am. 15,000 people arriving a day. 150 go to hotels - only 1%. Majority can still go straight onto public transport home without being tested on arrival
Govt has no estimate on the number of people who comply fully with self isolation at home (other estimates range from 29% to 67%). And no figures on whether police are actually taking any enforcement action if people aren’t home when they check (they weren’t at all up til Dec) /2
Matters because we know South Africa & Brazil variants still spreading & new strains still emerging in many countries not on the red list.
Remember in 1st wave <1% of cases came to UK from China, 62% from people travelling back from France & Spain /3
Read 5 tweets
Yvette Cooper Profile picture
12 Feb
1/ what is going on at border? Am hearing there’s a perfect storm w lots of Border Force staff self isolating & more people returning from high risk countries before hotels. What is Govt/Heathrow doing to prevent arrivals hall being a super-spreader queue?
metro.co.uk/2021/02/12/que…
2/ This cd get worse. ISU say Border Force haven’t been given operational guidance on hotel arrangements for Mon. It's now 4.30 Fri! Say they don’t know if officers need to check high risk arrivals, if they'll go straight to hotels from gate or mix with everyone in passport queue
3/ So what arrangements are being made to make sure those from high risk countries going to hotels aren’t queuing with those about to get on the tube home? System is meant to start in couple of days and ISU says Border Force still haven't been told what to implement
Read 5 tweets
Yvette Cooper Profile picture
13 Jan
Asked PM at #LiaisonCommittee what Govt was doing to stop new South Africa variant spreading in the UK. Asked why people have been able to travel from SA to UK for last 4wks without being tested & can go on public transport.

PM didn’t know. Said he’d look at it ..1/6
PM told me pre-travel tests were coming in (Good)

But they arent in place yet (4 wks after we were warned on SA).

Other countries introduced those tests months ago. So I asked why the tests hadn’t been introduced in November as Spain, Greece & others did. No explanation ...2
PM refers to quarantine measures since 8 June. But @CommonsHomeAffs was told today of huge weaknesses in border & quarantine arrangements - 90% of passengers not even checked to see if they filled in the forms, even less follow up later on. Why wasn’t system strengthened? ...3
Read 6 tweets
Yvette Cooper Profile picture
17 Nov 20
Serious & troubling letters from @PoliceChiefs & @NCA_UK to @CommonsHomeAffs on preparations for 1 Jan, outlining the security downgrade if no negotiated agreement, inc impact on public protection, serious crime & counter terror
committees.parliament.uk/publications/3…

committees.parliament.uk/publications/3…
Police & border force check SIS2 criminal database 600m of times a yr. @PoliceChiefs says loss has “major operational impact.” The fallback is to use Interpol but that requires manual data entry & includes far fewer people & objects - “it will be slower & lack capability”
On overseas criminal records, if we lose access to the ECRIS database @PoliceChiefs warn that it will take much longer to check records (up from 6 days to 66 days) “impacting on public protection”
Read 10 tweets
Yvette Cooper Profile picture
4 Nov 20
Troubling @CommonsHomeAffs session today.

I asked Minister for Future Borders & Immigration what future border security checks will be in Jan if we lose access to the SIS2 criminal database currently used to check everyone.

Neither Minister nor officials cd tell us /1
Govt says we’re likely to lose access to SIS2 for border checks in Jan

But also says they will exclude more foreign criminals

I asked how they plan to do that if they have no idea who they are

Minister says they’ll check the database

Back to my question. Which database? /2
It matters. Senior police officers tell us often how vital SIS2 is in finding/stopping serious criminals, terror suspects, sex offenders at the border & within UK. We check it 600m times pa. So if we’ll lose access to SIS2 in Jan, surely Govt has work underway on replacement? /3
Read 4 tweets
Yvette Cooper Profile picture
26 Aug 20
2 senior civil servants gone over results fiasco but Gavin Williamson is still Education Secretary. Govt says he “sought assurances” it was all OK so it wasn’t his fault. What utter garbage. He was told what was wrong & he didn't sort it. This is his mess bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politi…
This is the Education Sec who was told in advance that private schools were benefiting at the expense of state sixth forms yet he still went ahead. It’s in the Ofqual document he will have been sent and will have read before the results were published assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/upl…
This is the Education Sec who was told in advance that 30-50% of the A’level results were likely to be inaccurate with the algorithm, yet he still went ahead. Again, its in the Ofqual documents he will have been sent/have read before results were published
Read 7 tweets

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