The Planned Shoulda-test Hotel
The New Statesman | UK politics and culture
The New Statesman
4.4 • 1.4K Ratings
🗓️ 26 January 2021
⏱️ 35 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Travellers to the UK from Covid hotspots will be required to quarantine in hotels, under plans expected to be announced this week. Epidimiologists have long been arguing for tighter border controls, but debate continues among MPs who are divided on how tough these measures should be.
On The New Statesman podcast Stephen Bush, Anoosh Chakelian and Ailbhe Rea discuss whether the government's plans are sufficient to protect the UK against new coronavirus variants, and what the divisions in cabinet mean for this new effort to contain the virus.
Then, in You Ask Us, they tackle your question on whether the upcoming Welsh elections have a wider importance.
We'd love to hear from you! Send us your You Ask Us questions at youaskus.co.uk.
You can follow Stephen Bush on twitter @stephenkb. Anoosh Chakelian is @Anoosh_C and Ailbhe Rea is @PronouncedAlva.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The New Statesman Podcast is sponsored by Barclays, sparking opportunities in your community. |
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| 0:42.0 | To find out more, search Barclays communities. Hi, I'm Anush. And I'm Alva. And on today's news, |
| 0:58.0 | and I'm Alva. And on today's New Statesman |
| 1:00.7 | podcast, we discussed the idea of quarantining in hotels, and you ask us, should I care about the Welsh elections? |
| 1:07.0 | So we're waiting for the government to announce what plans it has to quarantine people in |
| 1:18.9 | hotels who are coming back from certain countries. |
| 1:21.8 | So the idea so far, although it hasn't yet been officially |
| 1:25.2 | decided yet, is for arrivals from South Africa and South America as well as Portugal coming |
| 1:31.1 | back to Britain to have to isolate in a hotel for 10 days. |
| 1:34.6 | Well, actually flights from those places are actually banned, so they'd be coming back |
| 1:38.4 | sort of indirectly from those countries. |
| 1:40.1 | But at the moment, the rules are, if you're coming into the the UK then you do have to self isolate for 10 days |
| 1:46.1 | but I suppose this centralized system would make sure that people are actually sticking to that rule |
| 1:52.2 | but you know this hasn't been part of the UK's pandemic response so far and it has come under pressure from certain voices in the scientific community as well as politicians to do this sort of all the way along but it's |
| 2:05.2 | resisted it for various reasons. Will it be too late if they decide to bring this in now? |
| 2:11.2 | Alva you were writing about it in Morning Call what do you think? |
| 2:13.6 | Yeah and I'm interested to hear both of your thoughts on this because I have my own views |
... |
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