Grant Shapps admits quarantine regime ‘confusing’ for travellers
Transport secretary Grant Shapps has admitted that the differences to the UK’s quarantine policies across the four nations are creating “confusion” for travellers.
Speaking to Sky News this morning, Shapps said that he could only be responsible for the restrictions in England, not Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland.
“I do realise it creates confusion for people not to have a single rule (across the UK) but we do have this devolved approach throughout the United Kingdom and I can only be responsible for the English part of that”, he said.
The admission comes after ministers decided not to add either Portugal or Greece to the “red list” of countries requiring travellers to self isolate for 14 days when they return to the UK.
However, Wales will quarantine travellers from Portugal, Gibraltar, French Polynesia and the Greek islands of Mykonos, Zakynthos, Lesbos, Paros, Antiparos and Crete as of Friday.
Scotland will do the same for travellers from Portugal and French Polynesia from early on Saturday morning.
The divergences were lambasted by an already exasperated travel industry, which called for urgent clarity on the situation.
Julia Lo Bue-Said the CEO of The Advantage Travel Partnership told Morning Wire: “It’s no wonder the British travelling public is in a total quarantine quandary. This level of confusion will continue to damage consumer confidence which could devastate this industry.
“We need a far more considered and consistent approach which both mitigates the health risk as much as possible whilst allowing greater travel freedoms for the consumer and business traveller – and we need this urgently.”
She said that the country should impose an airport testing regime, as has been suggested by many in the aviation and travel industries, to help get air travel going again.
This afternoon the general secretary of pilots union Balpa wrote to Shapps to urge him to impose such a regime, saying the current quarantine system was “killing aviation”.
“The crisis facing the travel and aviation industry is acute. Thousands of jobs are being lost, livelihoods are being destroyed and companies are on the edge of survival”, Brian Strutton said.
“The Government must do everything it can to support such a vital sector”, he added.
“Allowing testing as an alternative to the current 14-day quarantine periods for incoming passengers from higher-risk areas would be a sensible and effective measure”.
Portugal in particular had been widely touted to be added to the list, as the seven-day infection rate in the country had increased from 15.3 to 23 per 100,000 people.
This is above the threshold of 20 which the government has been using as one of its main criteria for triggering quarantine conditions.
Shapps stressed that the figure was “just one of the many bits of data” from the Joint Biosecurity Centre that the government was using to make its decisions.