We have now issued court proceedings after the government refused to review their controversial hotel quarantine rules.
After forcing the government into a U-turn on the costs of hotel quarantine for those facing financial hardship, we believe that detaining fully vaccinated people for ten days in a hotel if they have tested negative on their return is an ‘unlawful deprivation of liberty’ and violates their fundamental human rights.
Money back for hotel quarantine stays
Our recently commissioned research commissioned shows that more than two-thirds of people (from a survey of 2,000 respondents) consider it unfair to force travellers to quarantine at a hotel at a cost of more than £2,000 per person if they have attended a funeral in a red-list country.
Tom Goodhead, Global Managing Partner, said: “It’s disappointing that the government hasn’t yet realised that this policy is a fundamental breach of people’s human rights. Law-abiding citizens who have been double vaccinated should be free from hotel quarantine.
“The idea that they need to pay for the privilege of their own imprisonment is outrageous.
“The government should look at the actions of almost every other major country in Europe who are exempting the double vaccinated from all forms of quarantine including hotel quarantine which most countries regarded as to extreme to even introduce in the first place.”
If the claim is successful, double vaccinated travellers would no longer have to quarantine at the hotels, and it could also pave the way for the government to refund the fees of all those who were vaccinated and still had to stay there.
As well as a refund for those forced into hotel quarantine, we are considering the possibility of payment of hundreds of millions of pounds in compensation for unlawful imprisonment.
Grounds for claiming
The claim issued today highlights that an unvaccinated traveller from an amber-list country can stop isolating after a negative test on day five.
This shows that the government acknowledges that, even if self-isolation is justified, testing after five days can establish whether a person does or does not threaten public health. The deprivation of red-list travellers’ liberty beyond five days is unjustified on this ground alone.
“The people that are contacting us for help every day are not reckless globetrotters,” Tom said.
“They are typically people who have been forced to travel to care for relatives or attend funerals of their parents or siblings.
“To then force them into what the mass media have described as ‘worse than a prison’ is not only reprehensible but also unlawful.”
Hotel Quarantine Policy
The Hotel Quarantine Policy considers whether travellers arriving from amber list countries have been vaccinated but there is no change in relation to the treatment of fully vaccinated red list travellers.
It also highlights that amber-list travellers who have been fully vaccinated don’t need to quarantine at all unless they test positive on day two of their return.
This is because of the considerably lower risk profile of fully vaccinated people, something the government acknowledge here by their own volition.
Were you forced to stay in hotel quarantine?
We are now inviting anyone who was forced to stay in hotel quarantine to register their details at www.hotelquarantinelawyers.com if they are interested in joining the potential claim for a refund and compensation in the future.
It is estimated that more than 100,000 people have been unlawfully forced to quarantine in hotels since the policy was launched in February this year.
Tom Goodhead, said: “We feel it is our responsibility as a law firm to ensure that no one is unlawfully detained in the UK.
“It is also completely unreasonable for the government to assume the ineffectiveness of home quarantine without first considering alternatives, which have already been successfully implemented in many other countries across the world.”
Many European states dismissed the idea of hotel quarantine because they acknowledged that the detention of people without a confirmed infection or of those who are fully vaccinated, may not be covered by the exception to the Right to Liberty under Article 5 of the European Convention on Human Rights.
