‘Arrogance personified’: Johnson slammed for rejecting First Minister’s plea over Covid-19 travel

Plaid Cymru leader Adam Price has slammed the Prime Minister Boris Johnson as “arrogance personified” after the latter ruled out stopping people from locked-down areas of England from visiting Wales.

Boris Johnson had earlier rejected a call by First Minister Mark Drakeford to ban people travelling from Covid-19 hotspots in England to Wales.

“We are all one country, people should exercise their common sense,” Boris Johnson said. “They should follow the guidance. And that’s what we’re going to do.”

Adam Price said his attitude was “arrogance personified”.

“Independence means Wales never being ruled by an Old Etonian Tory ever again,” he said. “Now that’s a ban we can all get behind.”

Under the current rules, people living in locked down areas of Wales can only leave with a “reasonable excuse” but there is no equivalent rule in England.

It means people from locked down areas of England can travel through locked down areas of Wales but those living there can’t leave.

‘Risk’

First Minister Mark Drakeford said he wrote to the prime minister on Monday urging him to put in place similar stay-local rules for English lockdown areas.

“As we act to prevent people who live in hotspots in Wales from travelling to England, and taking the risk of the virus with them, so the Prime Minister in his capacity as the Prime Minister of England in this case ought to do the same to prevent people from English hotspots from travelling elsewhere in England, to Wales, or other parts of the United Kingdom, because of the risk that that undoubtedly poses,” Mark Drakeford said.

Arfon MP Liz Saville Roberts also called in the House of Commons for the Prime Minister to act to stop those under restrictions in England from travelling to Wales.

She raised concerns that residents in areas with high levels of Covid-19 transmission were travelling to parts of Wales with much lower rates, potentially spreading the virus.