Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, with reference to the covid-19 outbreak, if he will publish the scientific evidence underpinning the 14-day quarantine policy.

SAGE advice is not routinely published. Scientific advice can give us estimates of the incidence of coronavirus internationally and domestically, and ministers decide how to respond to the risk of imported cases based on this advice.

The scientific advice shows that when domestic transmission is high, imported cases represent a small amount of the overall total and they make no significant difference to the epidemic. However, this can change when the domestic transmission/rate of infection is low, and people are arriving from countries with a higher rate of infection.

Now that domestic transmission within the UK is coming under control, and other countries begin to lift lockdown measures, it is the right time to prepare new measures at the border, including self-isolation.