UK ‘will not hesitate to impose restrictions on travellers from other countries’

Boris Johnson has said ministers will “not hesitate” to impose a quarantine system for travellers from other countries to the UK if needed.

The Prime Minister, speaking on a visit to St Joseph’s school in Upminster, urged those who go abroad to look at the Foreign Office travel advice carefully.

It comes after a rise in Covid-19 cases in France, with face masks being made mandatory in busy parts of Paris as of Monday.

Mr Johnson said: “I don’t want to advise people about their individual holidays, individual decisions, they should look at the travel advice from the Foreign Office clearly.

“But what I will say, and I hope people would expect us to do this, in the context of a global pandemic, we’ve got to keep looking at the data in all the countries to which British people want to travel.

“Where it is necessary to impose restrictions or to impose a quarantine system, we will not hesitate to do so.

“It’s been a huge effort for the entire population of this country to get the disease down to the levels that we are currently seeing, but we do not want reinfection and that’s why we’ve got to keep a very, very close eye on the data in destinations around the world.”

Last month, the UK Government announced that travellers to the UK from Spain would have to quarantine for 14 days on their return to the country.

Luxembourg, Andorra, The Bahamas and Belgium were also added to the UK’s 14-day quarantine list last week.