In view of rising Covid cases, NICOLA Sturgeon has imposed a travel ban on trips to Manchester or Salford – despite similar infection rates as Dundee.
The Prime Minister said “non-essential” travel to English cities would be illegal as of Monday as she defended the move as “proportionate”.
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Ms. Strugeon banned travel to Manchester or SalfordPhoto credit: Reuters
But rivals hit the “confusing” decision, claiming it “smelled of shameless nationalism”.
The latest data put the seven-day fall rate per 100,000 population at 333 in Salford and 329 in Manchester – compared to 317 in Dundee, which is in Level 2 measures and Scots can travel freely there.
However, Ms. Sturgeon insisted that the travel restrictions for the cities in the Greater Manchester area – written down in Covid regulations – will no longer apply “longer than necessary”.
And she pointed to the lifting of travel bans for Scots traveling to the Republic of Ireland and Bedford, England – although restrictions remain in place for Bolton or Blackburn & Darwen affected by the virus.
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At their Covid briefing, the SNP Supremo said: “We are legally obliged to act proportionately and all of this is taken into account.
“Nobody wants travel restrictions, nobody wants them to last longer than necessary.
“We actually picked up some today and continue to make these decisions based on assessments of necessity and proportionality.”
Further urging the Dundee settlement, the Prime Minister said the travel bans were designed to “minimize the risk of more viruses entering Scotland or of people traveling from Scotland making things worse elsewhere”.
But the Scottish shadow secretary of Labor, Ian Murray, struck: “The decision to stop traveling to Manchester when prices there are comparable to parts of Scotland smells like shameless nationalism.
“We need to get our own house in order first and foremost, but instead the SNP selectively bans travel long after cases have increased and with no plan for enforcement.
“We all accept the need for some restrictions when they are justified, but there is no clear logic.
“It seems like one rule for travel within Scotland and another for travel to England.
“This injustice will not only offend people with friends and family in Manchester, it also risks undermining public confidence in the rules as a whole.”
And Scots Tory health spokeswoman Annie Wells said, “We’re used to the SNP bringing Covid guidelines that don’t make sense, but this decision is a new level of confusion.
“They seem to have decided that Covid is more dangerous south of the border than the areas where it is spreading faster in Scotland.
“The SNP should clear up the confusion and provide evidence to support this move.”
Matt Kilcoyne, assistant director of the Adam Smith Institute economic think tank, joked on Twitter, “Ah yes, but you see, Dundee as Yes City means it has natural immunity to Covid or something.”
When Mrs Sturgeon announced the first legal travel bans to certain parts of England last month, there was debate over whether the move was lawful and beyond Holyrood’s authority.
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At the time, Glasgow University law professor Adam Tomkins, a former Tory MSP, said: “When Scottish ministers first passed regulations banning travel to England, my instinct was ‘surely they don’t have the power’.
“But if you look closely at the Scotland Act, it turns out that they are likely to have that power if they deem it necessary to exercise it in the name of public health.
“If you have the power to prohibit all travel from Scotland to England, then you probably have less power to prohibit all travel from Scotland to certain regions of England.
“However, the power to set the rules must be distinguished from the ability to monitor or enforce them.”
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