Labour urges Boris Johnson to cancel trip to India over Covid risk

Labour has urged Boris Johnson to “set an example” and cancel his forthcoming trip to India because of the Covid risk.

Steve Reed, the shadow communities secretary, said because of the threat posed by new variants of the virus, the prime minister should abandon plans to fly to India later this month and instead hold his scheduled meetings via Zoom.

Related: Add India to UK travel ban list to stop Covid variant, urges scientist

No 10 has already scaled back its plans for the trip, which will be Johnson’s first major overseas visit since becoming PM in 2019 and was originally meant to last four days.

But with new cases in India reaching more than 200,000 a day within the last week, and worries about a coronavirus variant first detected in India now present in the UK, some scientists have said the country should already be placed on the “red list” of states subject to the strictest travel restrictions.

Speaking on Sky’s Sophy Ridge on Sunday, Reed said Johnson should abandon his trip because “all of us in public life need to try and set an example.

“There are new variants emerging all around the world. The government is telling people don’t travel if you don’t absolutely have to travel. I can’t see why the prime minister can’t conduct his business with the Indian government by Zoom.”

At the end of last week Downing Street said the India trip would be “slightly shorter” than planned and now most of the important meetings were due to take place all on one day – Monday 26 April.

But the briefing coincided with the news that 77 cases of a new variant of coronavirus first detected in India, known at B.1.617, have been detected in the UK. The discovery has concerned scientists because the variant has two mutations that could help it evade the body’s immune responses.

In an interview on the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show Dr Susan Hopkins, the chief medical adviser to NHS test and trace, said B.1.617 was still classified as a “variant under investigation”, rather than as a more risky “variant of concern”, because the data was not yet available to show whether it was more transmissible or more likely to be resistant to the vaccine.

Asked if it was spreading in the community in the UK, as opposed to just being present in people who have arrived from India, she said there were two cases that did not seem to be linked to travel, which were still being investigated to see if there was a link with someone who had been abroad.

George Eustice, the environment secretary, said on Sunday he thought the PM’s India trip should go ahead. He said the rules did allow trips to India for business purposes and he thought, for a visit like this, it was appropriate for Johnson to be travelling in person.

Johnson and those travelling with him would be kept Covid-secure, Eustice said.

Asked why India was not already on the red list, Eustice told Marr: “There are quite a lot of robust tests and checks for anybody coming into the country. But, look, we keep this under regular review.”

Downing Street also said the decision not to place India on the red list – which would almost certainly lead to the trip being cancelled – was “informed by the latest scientific data”.

Asked about the Labour call for the trip to be abandoned, a No 10 spokesperson said: “The decision to add and remove countries from the red list is informed by the latest scientific data and public health advice from a world-leading range of experts.

“As with all our coronavirus measures, we keep the red list under constant review and our priority remains to protect the health of the UK public. We will not hesitate to introduce tougher restrictions if necessary.”