No contracts signed for quarantine hotels, just seven days before scheme comes into effect

No contracts have yet been signed with hotel chains to provide rooms for mandatory quarantine, with just seven days to go to the introduction of the scheme at UK ports and airports, Downing Street has revealed.

Labour said that the delay in acting "beggars belief" and would put people at risk.

Measures announced last week will require an estimated 1,000 UK residents a day returning from coronavirus hotspots around the world to spend 10 days in isolation in hotels from 15 February.

But hotel groups have complained of a lack of communication from government, and Labour denounced the scheme as “too little, too late”, as it is due to come into effect more than a month after the discovery of the new South African variant of Covid-19.

Some 147 cases of the South African variant, which is thought to have some resistance to the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine, have been uncovered in the UK.

Asked how many hotels were ready to receive travellers from the 33 hotspot countries, the official spokesperson for the prime minister told a Westminster media briefing: “Last week, the Department of Health issued a commercial specification to hotels near ports and airports.

“This asked for proposals on how they could deliver and manage quarantine facilities. No formal contracts have been awarded yet.”

Countries covered by the quarantine hotel scheme include several South American and African countries where new Covid variants have been detected in large numbers of people. Foreign nationals are already covered by bans on travel to the UK from these areas.

Some senior figures in the travel industry have cast doubt on the government’s figure of 1,000 arrivals per day, suggesting that the 10-day warning appeared to be intended to persuade the vast majority of those who might be affected to travel before the 15 February deadline.

But Boris Johnson’s spokesperson said he had no figures for numbers of people arriving back in the UK in time to beat the deadline.

Travellers staying in quarantine hotels will be required to pay for their own accommodation, with bills expected to amount to over £1,000.

Further details of the scheme will be announced later this week, said the PM’s spokesperson.

Labour's shadow home secretary Nick Thomas-Symonds said: "It beggars belief that no agreements have been made with hotels, just a few days before the quarantining system is due to begin.

"It will be over 50 days since the South African strain was identified and nearly a year since other countries have been successfully implementing hotel quarantine.

 "Even when these measures eventually do begin, scientists have made clear that the limited way they are being introduced will be insufficient to stop mutant strains of the virus reaching the UK, potentially putting the gains of the vaccine at risk. Conservative incompetence is yet again putting people at risk."