Scottish travel ban could be put into law to underline 'severity and importance' of Covid restrictions

Nicola Sturgeon has said bringing the travel ban to high Covid-19 prevalence areas of Scotland into law is still under consideration by the Scottish Government.

The First Minister said the ban would be moved to law to underline the “importance” of the message.

She said: "If we are to maintain that more targeted, proportionate approach, I hope that it is reasonably self-explanatory that we must then not have people travelling from one part of the country to another because the danger then is that the virus is spread from high prevalence areas to low prevalence areas, and those low prevalence areas will quickly become higher prevalence areas and the risk then is that they have to have a higher level of restriction.

Nicola Sturgeon has reiterated calls for people not to travel outside of their council areas.

"We continue to keep under review whether it is sufficient in terms of the severity and importance of the message we give to the public for those restrictions to be in guidance or do we think they require to be underlined and given the force of law.

"Given the force of law, it would of course give the police the powers … if they find people breaching those restrictions to apply enforcement measures. That is under active consideration.”

Ms Sturgeon said a decision was still yet to be made on the issue.

She said: "We haven’t reached a decision. It will be one of the things we will consider over the weekend and into next week and if we decide not to put them into law just now, and we haven’t decided that yet, it will be something we still keep under ongoing review.”