Coronavirus: Minister says UK has world's second-highest death toll because 'we are a global travel hub'

Many argue the UK had advantages as an island, able to easily close its borders - yet it allowed in travellers from hotspots

Britain has suffered far more coronavirus deaths than other nations because it receives so many international travellers, a government minister claims.

Simon Clarke hit back at growing criticism that the lockdown came too late – leading to 50,000 people losing their lives – by arguing it was explained by the UK's unique vulnerability.
 
“The truth is that Britain was always going to be hugely exposed to this virus because of some the features of our society,” the local government minister said.

“We are a global travel hub - we were always going to face big challenges.”

However, Mr Clarke rejected a suggestion that was further proof that strict quarantine rules should have been imposed in March, instead of only in mid-June.

The decision to wait until requiring travellers to isolate for 14 days was “proportionate in terms of trying to maximise savings of lives and the economy”, he told Sky News.

Many critics have argued that the UK – far from being uniquely exposed to coronavirus – had advantages as an island, able to easily close its borders.

Instead, travellers from earlier hotspots such as Italy and Spain were allowed to continue to enter freely, the main cause of the explosion in infections and deaths, scientists now say.

Mr Clarke’s comments come after Neil Ferguson, perhaps the UK’s leading epidemiologist, said up to 25,000 lives could have been saved if the lockdown had been imposed a week earlier.

The professor cited studies suggesting about 1,500 cases were imported from Spain and Italy early March, but were not picked up because of a lack of screening at the border.

The study, which analysed genetic sequences from 20,000 UK coronavirus cases, estimate that 34 per cent arrived from Spain, 29 per cent from France and 14 per cent from Italy.

In the Commons, Boris Johnson was mocked by Keir Starmer for continuing to claim it is “too early” to draw conclusions about where the country went wrong at the start of the pandemic.

Rory Stewart, the former Conservative cabinet minister – who was almost a lone political voice calling for a lockdown in early March – blamed the prime minister for failing to ask the right questions.

He agreed the prime minister followed what the chief medical officer, Chris Whitty, and the chief scientific adviser, Patrick Vallance, advised in that critical period.

But he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “That was the big difference from Britain the World Health Organisation and many other countries who set out to suppress [the virus] early.

“The job of politicians is to challenge and also to challenge on the basis of what is happening in other countries.”

Instead, the tendency of government was to simply “ask for more information” and to “move more slowly”.