Hotel quarantine: Law firm launches legal challenge

A law firm is legally challenging the government’s policy for isolating arrivals from red list locations in quarantine hotels.

PGMBM, which specialises in group action litigation, is seeking a judicial review of “managed quarantine” – the government’s term for requiring travellers from high-risk countries to spend 11 nights in a secure hotel.

In a statement, the company said that forcing people who have been fully vaccinated in the UK to be “detained” in a hotel constitutes “an ‘unlawful deprivation of liberty’ and violates fundamental human rights”.

The managing partner, Tom Goodhead, said: “Prisoners are entitled to more liberty than those forced to quarantine in hotels. We have all read about the horrific experiences of some of the people in these hotels.

“The only other European countries that have mandatory quarantine for travellers involving detention are Ireland and Norway. But both have amended their schemes so that fully vaccinated travellers do not need to quarantine.

“The UK must follow suit immediately. We want to see this draconian policy scrapped and those affected to be properly compensated.”

The law firm claims: “The government could end up paying tens of millions of pounds in compensation if they do not change their approach.”

Travellers from 60 countries and territories, including Turkey, Egypt and South Africa must pay in advance for an 11-night stay in a hotel room with three meals a day provided – as well as PCR tests on days two and eight.

For a couple, the total cost for “managed isolation” rises today by 55 per cent, from £2,400 to £3,715.

The government said: “In order to ensure taxpayers are not subsidising the costs of staying in these facilities, which have gone up, the cost will increase from Thursday 12 August.

“Alternative payment arrangements remain available to those who genuinely cannot afford to pay and rates remain the same for children up to 12.”

There have been reports of sexual harassment of female travellers and substandard hygiene in some quarantine hotels.

The “letter before claim” issued by PGMBM says that while amber list travellers are treated more favourably if they have been vaccinated, there is no similar concession for red list travellers.

“The failure to alter the requirements is disproportionate,” the firm says.

It is also calling for “test to release” after five days to be permitted for red list travellers.

The government says red list countries “present a high public health risk to the UK from known variants of concern, known high-risk variants under investigation or as a result of very high in-country or territory prevalence of Covid-19”.

When announcing the addition of Mexico and other locations to the red list from 8 August, the health secretary, Sajid Javid, said: “Further countries have been added to the red list to help protect the success of our vaccine rollout from the threat of new variants.”