IN a time of lockdown, it is quite extraordinary that 21,000 people a day are believed to be entering the UK. Are they really all on essential business?

So it is about time that the Government introduced a proper quarantine system.

But is a red list system, with people having to go to quarantine hotels if they arrive from one of 33 countries, really a proper system – or is Scotland’s, where everyone arriving by air from abroad has to quarantine?

The primary aim of quarantine is to ensure that new variants of the virus are not introduced into Britain when we are getting our homegrown infections under control through our lockdown and our vaccination programme.

Yet this virus is nimble on its feet. The 33 countries on the red list have been chosen because we fear new variants coming in from them.

But the new variant that has caused us the biggest problem so far was homegrown, in Kent. So a new virus could occur in any of the other 162 countries and sneak in while we are busy quarantining travellers from the red list countries.

It would surely be most logical to close our borders entirely.