The Scottish head of state has defended the ban on non-essential travel between the country and the north-west city of Manchester after his mayor criticized the decision and called for compensation for companies.
Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said Monday that the public health ban on people from Manchester and nearby Salford was based on COVID levels in the region, which was one of the first parts of England to do the Distribution of the Delta variant was first identified in India.
New coronavirus infections in Greater Manchester are higher than most places in England. Recent polls suggest that around one in 200 people in the Greater Manchester area has the virus, three times higher than infection rates in Scotland.
“These are public health measures,” Sturgeon told the BBC. “I have a duty, which I take very seriously, to keep Scotland as safe as possible.”
Andy Burnham, the mayor of Greater Manchester, said the ban, which went into effect on Monday, was disproportionate and “out of the blue”. He said he believed the Scottish government should compensate companies that will suffer from the ban.
Sturgeon, the leader of the Scottish National Party, which seeks to take Scotland out of Britain, countered by claiming that Burnham, one of the Labor Party’s most prominent politicians, is playing politics.
“I’ve always got on well with Andy Burnham and if he wants to have a grown-up conversation all he has to do is pick up the phone, but if I suspect it could be the case, it’s more about making a spit with him as part of a future positioning in a Labor leadership competition, then I’m not interested, “said Sturgeon.
“We all have serious work to do right now and I am serious about doing this work to keep Scotland as safe as possible,” she added.
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