Health board COVID quarantine payment exemption to stay

Health boards will remain exempt from liability to compensate people who are asked to self-isolate due to COVID-19, despite the expiry of emergency legislation, under proposals put out to consultation by the Scottish Government.

Under the Public Health etc (Scotland) Act 2008, health boards have a duty to pay compensation to a person who receives a written request to be quarantined, or excluded from a particular place or activity. To prevent undue financial pressure on health boards during the pandemic, the duty was modified to a discretionary power in relation to all infectious diseases. At the same time the Government offered support by way of the £500 self-isolation support grant, paid to certain people on low incomes.

The modifications to the 2008 Act only have effect while schedule 21 to the UK Coronavirus Act 2020 remains in force, and the Scottish ministers continue their statutory declaration under that schedule that the powers in schedule 21 remain a suitable means to reduce transmission of COVID and that Covid is a serious and imminent threat to public health.

Ministers now propose a longer-term modification to make the compensation duty discretionary, only as  respects COVID-related requests from health boards, and only for a limited period of time. The provisional expiry date of this modification would be autumn 2022, but this could be extended or brought forward, if necessary, through regulation-making powers. This would run alongside extension of the support grant or a similar support mechanism.

Click here to access the consultation, which runs only for four weeks until 24 September 2021.