Labour renews call for all ‘amber’ countries to be moved to ‘red list’

‘Securing our borders against new variants is the number one thing ministers can do to protect the reopening’ – shadow transport secretary, Jim McMahon

Danger zone: a beach at Cannes in southern France, which Labour wants to move to the ‘red list’ (Simon Calder)

Labour has renewed its call for tougher border controls.

The opposition is urging the government to scrap the “amber list” and move the countries currently on the medium-risk register to the “red list” – requiring arrivals from France, Italy, the US at around 150 countries to go into hotel quarantine.

It will use an urgent question in the House of Commons to demand the government scraps the amber list, introduces an “international vaccine passport” and publishes the available data on the decision-making behind the “traffic light” system.

The shadow transport secretary, Jim McMahon, said the amber list is “causing too many people travelling to countries not deemed safe”. These include France, Italy and Greece.

He said: “Ministers have presided over shambolic management of our borders and have chosen to turn their backs on the sector and the thousands of livelihoods that depend on it when support was most needed.

“Securing our borders against new variants is the number one thing ministers can do to protect the reopening.

“Labour wants to see travel reopen and backs an international vaccine passport and a limited and safe ‘green list’. But ministers must learn the lessons of the Delta variant.”

When announcing the latest set of moves, which includes Malta joining the quarantine-free green list, the transport secretary, Grant Shapps, said: “It’s right that we continue with this cautious approach, to protect public health and the vaccine rollout as our top priority, while ensuring that our route out of the international travel restrictions is sustainable.”

Mr Shapps also rejected criticism of the way that the government categorises countries. “There’s no circumstance in which there is not a scientific basis,” he told the BBC Today programme on Friday 25 June.

A leading analyst, Robert Boyle, calculated that 22 amber list countries, including France and Italy, appear to meet the government’s criteria for quarantine-free status.