We’re all banking on travel re-opening further and the new health secretary could be key, argues The PC Agency’s Paul Charles
The demise of Matt “Hands, Face, My Place” Hancock, either forced out by the prime minister or by his own resignation, has removed a key roadblock to opening up overseas travel.
He was the key driver of the Hancock/Patel/Gove troika who were united in favour of tightening border controls, as well as tightening the noose around firms trying to survive in international travel.
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This group has now been split apart by the arrival of Sajid Javid as new health secretary. The more positive trio of foreign secretary Dominic Raab, transport secretary Grant Shapps and education secretary Gavin Williamson must be rubbing their hands with some glee.
There is already a more positive tone.
Mr. Javid told the House of Commons this week that “no date we choose (to open up) comes with zero risk of Covid. We cannot simply eliminate it, we have to learn to live with it.”
It is this mantra that some of us in travel have been preaching for some time, urging a balance to be struck between the health priorities of government and the economic needs of firms across travel and transport. Living with Covid means enabling airlines, tour operators, travel agents, OTAs and the whole cycle of travel to get on with selling without rules that create consumer uncertainty.
Sajid Javid is a libertarian, far more business-friendly than his predecessor and sizzling with plenty of business experience.
It began early. As a teenager growing up in Rochdale and then Bristol, Sajid Javid borrowed £500 from a bank to invest in shares and that sparked his interest in globalisation. A travel streak then developed and ran through his veins.
In the early 1990s he lived in New York and became the youngest vice-president of Chase Manhattan Bank, regularly working in South America. He later relocated to Singapore as head of Deutsche Bank’s private equity business in Asia. One report says he was likely to have been earning approximately £3 million in pay and bonuses in banking by the time he left, and his career change into politics would have required a 98% pay cut.
As chancellor, he built his pro-business credentials even further and it is this experience which enables him to consider the impact of health policy on travel firms far more than Matt Hancock did.
Sajid Javid also has a close relationship with Rishi Sunak, the current chancellor, so the thinking at Cabinet meetings is likely to be focused far more on opening up travel as soon as possible, especially with their dual mindset of greater freedom.
With over 32 million people fully-jabbed in the UK, surely Sajid Javid can’t preside over a worse summer this year than last, where there were no vaccines available?
The great unlock in England on July 19 is still very much centred on the domestic economy. But, with more evidence day-by-day of vaccines working and breaking the link with hospitalisation and further deaths, our new, business-minded health secretary will find it harder to kick the can down the road in terms of opening up travel further. He knows the pressures that travel and transport firms are under and wants to bring certainty to their operations.
The next traffic light review, due on July 15, is also three days after Sajid Javid and the prime minister will have given the go-ahead to unlocking, giving a brighter backdrop for future travel decisions by Covid-O, the government’s Covid Cabinet Steering Group.
With fond memories of his time working in New York and Singapore, let’s hope Sajid Javid can’t wait to get back travelling again, enabling all of us to get back to business with certainty.
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