Lord Sumption:

In the United Kingdom we have the most extreme example of what the Deputies are, quite justifiably, complaining of whereby different quarantine rules affecting different countries are enforced in England, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland. I will not go into the politically controversial reasons for that but clearly the results are extremely unsatisfactory, as everybody recognises. The main problem about dealing with this is at a European Union level is that the conditions differ in different countries. It seems to me that the most that could be really agreed at a European level is a measure by which, in time, we could restrict travel. In Britain we have a loose understanding, which is really not much more than that, that there is a threshold infection rate above which people or countries would be placed on the red list for quarantine purposes. It would be possible to do that at a European level. I also take the view that many countries have taken about their national territory.I think that would be a view that is quite difficult to defend given the very different experiences that different countries have with their state of hospital resources and very different social habits.