Recommendation 28

The NAO reported that the circumstances in which government had to implement the traffic light system had often been a crisis response requiring government to move at pace.49 The Cabinet Office explained that the system was a response to the then concern about vaccine-evading variants of COVID-19. We observed that COVID-19 had been in the UK for a year by the time most of the travel measures were introduced from February 2021 onwards. Given this, we asked why the MQS had been set up hurriedly. DHSC recognised that there had been a short amount of time between the decision to set up the system and it being launched. It explained that a range of potential measures and controls at the border had been discussed in advance, and MQS was announced in January 2021 and had to go live by 15 February 2021.50 We asked why there had been a 48-hour delay in re-opening quarantine hotels when government decided that they were needed during the omicron wave in late 2021, during which time potentially infectious people from red-list countries self-isolated at home. DHSC told us that 48 hours was the best it could achieve, as it took longer to set up a quarantine hotel than a standard hotel as the MQS had additional requirements such as security guards. We asked whether DHSC could reopen the quarantine hotels very quickly if needed again. DHSC explained that, unlike during the omicron wave, it no longer had specific hotels available as contingency and quarantine people in hotels was “an extreme measure … something you would do only in real need”. It told us that it was confident, that if it did find itself in similar circumstances, the playbook of options that it had developed would serve it well, but accepted that setting up quarantine hotels would definitely take it longer than 48 hours.51