NICOLA Sturgeon has urged Boris Johnson to close the borders, in a bid to tackle rising coronavirus cases.
The First Minister said only essential travel should be allowed.
She was speaking as the UK recorded 60,916 coronavirus cases overnight – the highest daily figure to date.
It is the first time the figure has exceeded 60,000 in 24 hours.
In Scotland, a further 2529 coronavirus cases were recorded, with a 14.8% positive rate.
Of those, around half are thought to be the new, highly transmissible variant. Speaking at the Scottish Government’s coronavirus briefing, Sturgeon said there was agreement across the UK on toughening rules.
She said: “I had a four nations discussion last night, chaired by Michael Gove from the UK Government, where the issue of the border, stricter restrictions on travel, including controls at the border, was discussed.
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“There was an agreement in that call to take forward urgent four-nation discussions about that over the course of the days [ahead].”
Sturgeon continued: “I think there has been some speculation from the UK Government about a possible announcement soon and we are part of those discussions.”
The First Minister said border controls are the responsibility of the UK Government, adding: “But there is a willingness to being collaborative on how we make these decisions.”
She added: “I want to stress something that is perhaps just still not well enough understood, which is my responsibility in my role if that is the case, that it is against the law now to travel outside of Scotland or into Scotland without it being for an essential purpose.
“You should not be going overseas unless it is essential and you should not be coming into Scotland unless it is essential. That’s different to actual physical control of the border, but that’s the legal position. We have effectively said travel is banned and that is a message that I want to get across there very seriously.”
International arrivals into Scotland represent a “very, very small” fraction of what these were a year ago, the First Minister said.
“International travel has really plummeted and that’s certainly important and we want to make sure that we’re not allowing new strains of the virus into the country,” she said.
Some reports have suggested anyone travelling into the UK could be required to produce a negative Covid-19 test no more than 72 hours before their journey.
Other measures being considered could include bans on flights from coronavirus hotspots around the world.
At the moment anyone arriving in the UK has to quarantine for 14 days – but they can cut this down to five and then have a test.
If that test is negative, they can be released early.
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Earlier, Gove told ITV’s Good Morning Britain, that UK ministers would make announcements in the days ahead about measures to “make sure that our ports and airports are safe”.
He said: “It is already the case that there are significant restrictions on people coming into this country and, of course, we’re stressing that nobody should be travelling abroad. But I don’t want to pre-empt the specific advice that is going to be given.”
Gove later told broadcaster LBC that the government were “reviewing what the appropriate restrictions might be."
He continued: “You’ll appreciate that there are some journeys that do need to be made for vital commercial reasons, to make sure that we’ve got drugs in our hospitals, food on our shelves and so on, so it’s not as simple as a blanket restriction.”
Earlier, the SNP’s Joanna Cherry called on Home Secretary Priti Patel to “get a grip of the situation” and restrict international travel, similar to what other European countries have done to curb the spread of the virus.
She continued: “The UK government was far too slow to act in the spring, allowing hundreds of thousands of international visitors to enter the country in the middle of a global pandemic without effective measures in place.
“It seems as though they haven’t learnt a thing.”
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