POLICE may be asked to “do more” at England’s border with Scotland, said Nicola Sturgeon as she warned of the threat of variant forms of coronavirus.

Holyrood and Westminster have diverged in their approaches to tackling mutant forms of Covid from entering the country.

New UK quarantine rules only apply to people arriving from 33 countries deemed “high risk”, but Scotland’s apply to all international travellers.

There are fears travellers could avoid the rules by flying into England first.

The First Minister said: “There may be a combination of things we have to do.

“Agreements with the UK Government, and also asking the police to do more than what they are doing right now in terms of the checks coming into the country. That is still under discussion.”

However, there is concern that tougher border controls could impact on trade and people commuting between the countries for work.

Suzanne Caldwell, managing director of Cumbria Chamber of Commerce, said: “It’s hard to say what Nicola Sturgeon means by Police Scotland ‘doing more’ but we’d be concerned if the flow of people and goods were to be disrupted.

“People commute to work across the border every day and many businesses in Cumbria deliver to customers in Scotland, and vice-versa.

“The last thing businesses need, on top of the lockdown and the pandemic, is additional restrictions on the essential movement of people and goods.”

Ms Sturgeon would not say what police may be asked to do, but the Scottish Government is lobbying Westminster for stricter measures to be rolled-out across the UK.

She said: “If we can’t persuade them to emulate us then we’ll continue to do what we plan to do, it will just be we have more of a back-door vulnerability, and more of one than we would like to have.”