Arrivals to Scotland face £480 fine if they breach quarantine

People arriving in Scotland from abroad will be fined £480 if they fail to quarantine for 14 days, the justice secretary has said.

Humza Yousaf confirmed the policy will begin from Monday north of the border after the measures were first announced by the Home Office.

All arrivals will be required to fill out forms detailing where they will be isolating and give their contact details.

Border Force officers will be carrying out spot checks with fixed penalty notices starting at £60 for people failing to provide that information or giving false information.

That initial fine would come down to £30 if paid within a fortnight but could be escalated for repeat and persistent offenders.

For any new arrivals who breach quarantine in Scotland, they will receive a blanket fine of £480 from Police Scotland, Yousaf announced.

People believed to be repeatedly breaching the quarantine can be reported to the procurator fiscal for criminal prosecution, facing penalties of up to £5000, although he said this would be done “as a last resort”.

The fines have been set at a lower level to those recently announced by UK home secretary Priti Patel.

Those failing to comply with Border Force will face initial fines of £100, while those who flout quarantine will be hit with a £1000 penalty.

Speaking at the Scottish Government’s daily briefing, on the same day as large Black Lives Matter protests in Glasgow and Edinburgh, Yousaf also echoed his plea to people to avoid mass gatherings.

The justice secretary said the movement against racial injustice had his “enduring support” but repeated that people should find other ways to demonstrate.

It comes after he, Labour MSP Anas Sarwar, human rights lawyer Aamer Anwar and Kadijartu Johnson, the sister of Sheku Bayoh, issued a joint statement calling for people to protest online.

Mr Bayoh died in 2015 aged 32 after being restrained by officers responding to a call in Kirkcaldy, Fife.

Yousaf told the briefing that the “understandable anger” from George Floyd’s death in the US has “exposed the sad truth that racism continues to blight every nation on earth”.

But he added: “The threat of Covid-19 remains with us and that is why I urged people not to attend mass gatherings that are a risk even with social distancing in place,” he says.

“Indeed, we have seen the disproportionate impact Covid-19 has on black and ethnic minority (BAME) communities.”

A Public Health England review found people from BAME groups were up to twice as likely to die with coronavirus than those from a white British background.

On Sunday, zero new Covid-19 deaths were reported in Scotland for the first time since March 20.