Travel industry leaders have urged new health secretary Sajid Javid to encourage cabinet ministers to act swiftly to reopen international travel or face the prospect of more job losses and economic woe.
A letter signed by 14 heads of travel agencies, airlines, tourism groups and unions follows last month’s national Travel Day of Action in an effort to maintain pressure on government to support the travel trade as the summer peak approaches.
It states: “We implore you and your Cabinet colleagues to act decisively to save jobs and businesses, and to set the industry on the road to recovery in a risk-based manner.
“For example, today we are seeing other countries, many with lower rates of vaccination than the UK, begin to reopen their borders and enable their citizens to travel again particularly through recognition of vaccination status.
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“We are encouraged that the government has confirmed an intention to relax rules for fully vaccinated people travelling from amber destinations, and to remove statements discouraging travelling to these places.
“However, these changes must be implemented quickly – at the latest alongside the lifting of domestic restrictions in July – if they are to make a meaningful difference to the UK travel industry.”
The plea to Javid comes amid weekend reports that quarantine could be scrapped for travellers returning from amber list countries such as Spain, Portugal and Greece from the delayed ‘freedom day’ on July 19. Prime minister Boris Johnson is to chair a Covid operations meeting today (Monday) to determine the plan.
Johnson will host a press conference this afternoon to set out plans for the final step of the government’s roadmap out of lockdown in England, giving businesses and the public more time to prepare. Javid will announce the plans to Parliament.
A Downing Street spokesperson said: “Step 4 is expected to begin on Monday 19th July if the government’s ‘four tests’ for easing Covid restrictions have been met. This will be confirmed on Monday 12th July following a review of the latest data.
“Our red list border control regime, surge testing, community testing and genome sequencing are effective ways of finding and isolating new cases of variants and will continue to be deployed.”
July 19 ‘on track’
And Javid, writing in the Mail on Sunday, said: “We are on track for July 19 and we have to be honest with people about the fact that we cannot eliminate Covid. The economic arguments for opening up are well known, but for me, the health arguments are equally compelling.”
The letter, whose signatories include Abta chief executive Mark Tanzer and the heads of Advantage Travel Partnership, The Travel Network Group, the Business Travel Association and Airlines UK, also calls for the government to ramp up its engagement with counterparts across Europe and the US to allow travel flows to recover.
“We are encouraged by reports the government is considering the mutual recognition of vaccination certification with the EU, which would build on the success of the rollout of the NHS app, and should also include the ability to prove a negative test result,” it says.
“Before the pandemic hit, our industry and those who worked in it were a cornerstone of the UK economy. As the third most internationally connected country in the world, we enabled tens of millions of UK residents to travel overseas, whether on business, for holidays, or to see families and friends, generating over £53 billion in domestic spending, and also catered for the 41 million tourists, travellers and business people arriving on our shores, spending £28.4 billion in our world-class cities and attractions.
Pandemic catastrophe
“The pandemic has been a catastrophe for our industry and the wider economy.
“Pre-pandemic, international travel directly sustained more than 1.5 million jobs in the UK economy, across aviation and tourism.
“However, hundreds of thousands of jobs have now been lost, and many more remain at risk. On the 23rd June, our coalition came together during a Travel Day of Action with events in Westminster and across the country to call for the safe return to international travel, through the proper implementation of the Global Travel Taskforce’s plan for a traffic-light system, by expanding the green list in line with the scientific evidence and making restrictions more proportionate, whilst keeping a strong red list to guard against variants.
“We also reiterated our calls for a package of tailored financial support, including extension of furlough support, that recognises that the travel sector’s ability to trade and generate income is much slower than anticipated and when compared to other parts of the domestic economy, able to reopen.”
Separately, the owner of Stansted and Manchester airports will go to the High Court this week to in a legal bid alongside Ryanair and British Airways owner IAG to force the government to disclose data behind the traffic light system for controlling the borders.
Manchester Airports Group chief Charlie Conrish said: “Despite the UK’s vaccination headstart, we are now clearly seeing European countries pull ahead of us in their recovery.
“We desperately need the UK government to be more agile and open when it comes to international travel.”
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