"As Deep and Clammy As The Grave"

Were Holiday-Wrecking Quarantines Worth It? 

The Government Haven't a Clue!

Peter Hitchens
The Mail On Sunday

As the [UK] Government wrecks another few thousand holidays with sudden quarantine, you might assume that it takes this sort of thing seriously, and keeps close track of it.

After all, you don’t force people to abandon holidays they have saved up for all year, and stampede them into dashing for the nearest port or airport, or expect them to spend money they haven’t got on cruelly inflated ticket prices so they can meet a 4am deadline, just on a whim, do you?

You don’t lightly demand that, if they miss that deadline, they remain under house arrest for 14 days, unable to go to work, do you?  Surely you do those things because you genuinely believe that there is a grave danger if people remain in the affected countries, which must be severely contained? I thought so too. But is it so?

Nearly a month after a last-minute announcement on July 25 smashed up tens of thousands of Spanish holidays, I asked Matt Hancock’s Health Department some simple questions. I began this process last Monday morning: 

‘How many of the UK travellers arriving from Spain after the introduction of the July 25 quarantine subsequently tested positive for Covid-19, how many of them were hospitalised, how many have recovered and (if applicable) how many died?’

Perhaps I should try Public Health England, said a Health Department official. Even I knew by then that PHE was about to be abolished, but I asked them anyway. They said they would try to find out, until they suddenly changed their mind and said I should ask… the Health Department. A Public Health England building is pictured above in Harlow, Essex

Well, if they know the answers, they are not telling. So I will say here that either they don’t know or don’t really care, in which case how dare they muck people’s lives up in this way?   Or are they embarrassed to reveal the answer because it shows that they made a fuss about nothing and the truth makes them look foolish?

The first response, as almost always with government departments, was an attempt to pass the buck (that’s why I start asking questions on Mondays). Perhaps I should try Public Health England, said a Health Department official.

Even I knew by then that PHE was about to be abolished, but I asked them anyway. They said they would try to find out, until they suddenly changed their mind and said I should ask… the Health Department. So it was back to them.

And in response to my clear and specific queries (which they already knew), they insultingly sent a useless ‘background’ explanation of the quarantine policy, which did not even pretend to be an answer.

Charitably, I behaved as if this might be a mistake, and asked them if they had accidentally left the figures out of the email. No, that’s your lot, they replied. I appealed again, and received a silence as deep and clammy as the grave.

Well, it’s not personal. My brief holiday abroad was not affected by any such state-created panic.

I’m used to being treated with contempt by insolent officialdom, all over the world. I don’t take it personally because they don’t mean it personally. It is what despotisms are like, and it always will be. The individual counts for nothing against the state and don’t you forget it. Go home and stay there till we tell you that you can come out.

But I still treasure a dying belief that this country is different. Here, I like to tell myself, we have an independent, honest Civil Service. Here we have a Government that is – in theory – answerable to a free Parliament and restrained by a strong, free press.

But all this has gone, in the space of a few fear-dominated weeks. So they can mess up your life without consequences, and they no longer worry about being held to account for it.  This is what makes this whole business so sinister and dark, the way in which an over-hyped virus is being used to gather unaccountable power in too few hands.