The aviation minister insists the current Covid-19 testing regime for travel needs to stay in place over Christmas and New Year, despite calls for them to be ditched as the Omicron variant has reached community transmission in the UK.
The government cleared all countries from its red list on Wednesday (December 15) but it won’t review the new testing rules for arrivals into the UK – which require pre-departure and post-arrival tests – until January 5.
Questioning the minister at a transport select committee meeting, Labour MP Ben Bradshaw said the transport secretary Grant Shapps and health secretary Sajid Javid had told him the extra tests were “pointless”.
But Robert Courts said pre-departure tests were justified on the grounds that they help slow down transmission of the virus and stop it being seeded further around the UK.
They also help protect people on the “travel corridor”, such as journeys on the tube, bus and at the airport, he added.
Courts reiterated the government’s stance that post-arrival PCR tests help with sequencing the virus to monitor the emergence of variants – although transport select committee chairman Huw Merriman pointed out in the summer than only a small percentage were being genomically-sequenced.
At today’s hearing, Bradshaw pointed out that other western European countries are not as strict and the “stringent” regime is causing “devastation to the transport industry and misery to families” – especially as Omicron is already “rampant” in the UK.
Courts said: “We said we will review testing requirements in January; it is a balancing act.
“I am absolutely aware of the impact that this will have on all parts of the travel industry No decision like this is taken lightly.”
Earlier in the session, Dr Jenny Harries, chief executive of the UK Health Security Agency, warned of a “very large wave” of the Omicron variant which could put health services “in peril”.
Bradshaw asked her why tests for international travel were so much stricter than rules for people in domestic settings.
“From a total population perspective, we have to be careful about trying to manage the total number of infections; trying not to add infections where we do not need them,” she said.
“Where we know cases are coming into the country, it seems prudent to try and prevent them from transmitting onwards where we can.”
She told MPs on the committee that Omicron is “probably the most significant threat we’ve had since the start of the pandemic”.
It now has a doubling rate of less than two days and is growing particularly fast in London and Manchester, Harries said.
Committee chair Huw Merriman told Courts that the travel industry feels it gets “picked on” and the economic impact of the rules are not taken into account.
Courts insisted that the sector is not targeted in that way but insisted: “It is critical to control the spread of the new variant.”
He added: “I want to have a relationship with the sector which I value more highly than I can possibly say; I want to have a relationship them that is co-operative, that is close, that is one characterised by mutual respect.
“I have regular round tables with all the parts of the travel sector under my brief.”
Asked if he has assessed the merits of additional financial support for aviation and transport, Courts said the government has already given £8 billion to the aviation sector.