Untargeted quarantine is a disaster in the making. There was a strong case for it back on March 13 when the idea was considered and rejected. Three months later, when the virus is on its way out across Europe, the Government has not even attempted to make a reasonable argument for why quarantine should now be imposed.

Travel and Tourism inbound and outbound, is the fifth largest industry in the UK employing almost 11% of the workforce from airline cleaners to those working in the shops and restaurants at points of travel.

A blanket quarantine to shut down the country beginning on June 8 is an unnecessarily blunt instrument. It would make far more sense to ban entry from certain “high-risk” countries and to build air bridges with those countries where the risk is low, as the rest of the world is doing.

As other countries begin to open up in order to protect their economies without undue risk to the lives of their citizens, we seem to be closing down. 

A blanket quarantine is not only unenforceable, as Cressida Dick, Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police said herself, but will at best just put a huge burden on resources and distract government from delivering the more important measures.

If by the time July comes, the Government’s slogan doesn’t change from "save lives" towards "save livelihoods", they are consigning a large part of our economy to the dustbin for the next 10 years, and the price will be paid by our children in the form of heavy taxation and unemployment.

Ms Patel may have picked up on public concern that there was no restriction on arrivals from abroad earlier in the pandemic. Now is not the time to act on that! That ship has sailed.