Anger and bafflement at 10-year jail term for fibbing travellers

Ten years in prison is a punishment for felonies including firearms dealing, actual bodily harm and non-fatal poisoning. But now, there’s a new crime that carries this sentence: lying on your passenger locator form at Heathrow airport.

The draconian measure, announced by Health Secretary Matt Hancock yesterday, is part of the government’s new quarantine travel rules and is coming under intense scrutiny.

Under the new laws, which come into force on Monday, UK and Irish residents arriving in England returning from the 33 “red list” countries – including Brazil, Portugal and South Africa – must spend 10 days in hotel quarantine. But anyone who makes a false declaration on the form completed by all international arrivals – in order to conceal their visit to one of these countries in the ten days prior to arriving in England – could face a decade in jail.

Lord Sumption, former senior judge of the UK’s Supreme Court, is a staunch objector to the new law. While measures to prevent dangerous new variants from entering the country are vital, the Health Secretary has lost his grip on reality, says Sumption. “Does Mr Hancock really think that non-disclosure of a visit to Portugal is worse than the large number of sexual offences involving minors, for which the maximum (sentence) is seven years?”

It seems that the government, which has been criticised throughout the pandemic for its lax border control, is now overcompensating. Dominic Grieve, the former Attorney General, speaking on the Today programme this morning, described the threat as “entirely disproportionate”.

The details of the legislation have not yet been published but, according to Grieve, the ten year figure appears to have been “plucked out of the air”, but is merely a threat.

“The reality is that nobody would get such a sentence. The courts are simply not going to impose it… I cannot see how they’d ever get a regulatory offence attracting 10 years imprisonment through parliament.”

The government needs to put down strict rules and needs to have penalties to enforce them, he says. However, it’s foolish, Grieve added, “to create such an exaggerated punishment” which is “never going to happen”.

But Secretary of State for Transport, Grant Shapps, defended the decision this morning, calling the new law “appropriate’. Deliberately seeking to evade detection from having been to a “red list” country, he maintained, is a very serious crime that could cost people their lives.