Disruption to cross-Channel trade if France added to COVID 'red list'

 Travel to and from France may be banned to control the spread of a 'third wave' of COVID-19 coronavirus from mainland Europe despite the move creating a risk of “very serious disruption” to food and medicine supplies, according to Boris Johnson.

The Times reports that the UK Prime minister confirmed yesterday that the government was considering adding France to its “red list”, severely limiting direct travel from the country. He said the measures may have to be introduced “very soon” to prevent mutant strains of the virus being imported.

He admitted that the move could severely interrupt cross-Channel trade, with particular threats posed to the flow of food and medicines to the UK.

The South African and Brazilian variants, which are more resistant to vaccines, account for up to 40 per cent of cases in parts of France.

The newspaper was told yesterday that the PM was coming under pressure from Chris Whitty, England’s chief medical officer, to implement tougher border controls.

Ministers have added 35 countries to the red list, which bans direct travel and prevents foreign nationals who have been in the countries in the previous 10 days from entering the UK. Britons can enter the UK from red-list countries - travelling via a third nation - but have to quarantine for 10 days in a hotel.

The measures affect South America, southern Africa and parts of the Middle East but have not applied to Europe since Portugal was removed from the list earlier this month.

'Balance to be struck'

Applying the measures to France would pose huge logistical difficulties because of the flow of trade via cross-Channel ferries and through the Channel Tunnel. Lorry drivers are likely to be exempt but will have to be tested when they enter the UK.

The potential disruption to cross-Channel trade would raise fears of a repeat of the scenes around Christmas which saw backlogs of thousands of trucks on their way to the Port of Dover.

This delay was also caused by concerns about the spread of variants of COVID-19, albeit at that time it was France which wanted to stop potential contamination from reaching its shores.

The situation was made worse by the imminent end of the Brexit transition period.

At the Commons liaison committee yesterday, the Labour MP Yvette Cooper said 2,000 to 3,000 cases of the Brazilian and South African variants had been found in France and asked why the country was not on the UK red list. Johnson said it was “something that we will have to look at.”

“There is a balance to be struck and what we don’t know is the exact state of the efficacy of the vaccines against the new variants and we have to balance that against the very serious disruption that is entailed by curtailing cross-Channel trade,” he said.

“We will take a decision, no matter how tough, to interrupt that trade, to interrupt those flows, if we think that it is necessary to protect public health and to stop new variants coming in. It may be that we have to do that very soon.”

The threat of adding France to the 'red list' was made just as the country removed the remaining travel restrictions imposed on the UK. For the past three months lorry drivers have been forced to register a negative COVID-19 test before crossing the Channel from the UK but will no longer need to do so, The Times noted.

Tests will still be required to drive to Denmark, the Netherlands and Germany.

Low-risk

Speaking to Sky News, Sarah Laouadi, policy manager for European road freight at industry body, Logistics UK, said that drivers are "low-risk" and that testing must be "proportionate."

She said: "It is vitally important to protect the UK's highly interconnected supply chain from the threat of new COVID-19 variants and rapid testing of drivers on arrival in the UK will provide additional confidence for those whose businesses they supply.

Laouadi added: "However, it is worth remembering that drivers are, by the nature of their jobs and thanks to contactless delivery procedures, a very low-risk category - as has been borne out by the testing carried out on drivers since the start of the pandemic - and any testing regime must be proportionate."