People arriving from a red list country could face severe penalties for not following the rules, including a prison sentence up to 10 years if they lie about travelling from a red list country.
Transport Secretary Grant Shapps told Sky News: “What we are dealing with now is the variants and with variants, we cannot risk it in these final stages when we’ve got the vaccine rolled out.
“We might end up with difficulty from variations, although we think so far that we will be able to take care of them through the vaccines.
“And because of that we think things like a prison sentence for lying about being in one of those red list countries is appropriate.”
