'Unsurprising': James O'Brien reacts to hotel quarantine scheme 'falling at first hurdle'
12 February 2021, 12:23
James O'Brien reacts to quarantine scheme system going "belly up"
James O'Brien says he finds it "utterly unsurprising" that the hotel quarantine scheme system "fell at the very first hurdle."
His words come in response to the Government's new booking portal for all "high-risk" arrivals appears to have been launched on Thursday with a number of technical problems.
New rules for UK arrivals, meaning they must stay in quarantine hotels, come into effect on Monday 15 February.
Responding to the technical issues, James said: "You just, like me, imagine that at some point around the Cabinet table somebody would have said 'look folks I don't care about anything else [but] just make sure it doesn't go belly up within minutes of launch'."
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He added: "I can't quite believe that nobody was on it. [They were] probably too busy putting their flags behind themselves before the TV cameras got turned on, weren't they?"
James continued: "Why was the Home Secretary not all over this hotel quarantine scheme, simply to ensure that it didn't go belly up within minutes of its launch."
His references to flags and Home Secretary Priti Patel come after she was speaking this morning with two Union flags behind her while on LBC's Call the Cabinet with Nick Ferrari.
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James also said: "We're in danger of having so much rubbish emptied over our heads that we actually stop noticing and we think that normal life involves rolling around in rubbish."
Shadow Home Secretary Nick Thomas-Symonds has said the technical errors faced by the new booking portal for all "high-risk" arrivals are "extremely worrying".
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