Scottish travellers returning from overseas will now be able to use private sector tests to comply with the traffic light restrictions for international travel.
Those returning to the country can now choose from the government’s list of approved providers. Until now, Scottish travellers had to book NHS home PCR tests.
The Scottish government said it was able to ease the restriction from “early September”, due to “enhanced monitoring of the performance and reliability of private testing providers to ensure public health safeguards are maintained”.
The UK government in Westminster has come under fire for allowing rogue testing providers on to its list, with health secretary Sajid Javid vowing to clampdown on “cowboy” firms.
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Jacqueline Dobson, president of travel agency Barrhead Travel, which is headquartered in Glasgow and has dozens of shops across Scotland, called the update “excellent news for the Scottish travel industry”.
She said: “For the last few months, Scottish travellers have been disproportionately affected by higher costs and this move will go some way to helping our recovery as travel continues to reopen.
But she warned: “The testing challenges do not end here. We need intervention at a UK Government level to really drive prices down to a reasonable cost.”
Dobson said: “Our counterparts in Europe have already recognised the need for affordable and accessible testing and the UK must follow suit in order to keep up with global travel recovery.”
She said the next review of the traffic light system, due by October 1, “must address these issues as well as providing a robust roadmap on exactly how international travel can move forward from the remaining restrictions that are hampering our recovery”.
Steve Heapy, chief executive of Jet2holidays, said: “Although overdue, this is very welcome news for Scottish holidaymakers who just want to get away to enjoy a much-needed holiday. Until now, they have been penalised by an unfair and costly testing regime, particularly when compared to the rest of the UK. Now that this has been rebalanced, it is imperative that governments across the UK do more to bring the cost of testing down.
“When you compare taking a holiday to practically any other area of life, there simply isn’t a level playing field. Lateral flow tests are taken as a valid and acceptable test in many environments, but not when it comes to international travel. There is absolutely no reason why cheaper lateral flow tests should not be brought in to replace expensive PCR tests for holidaymakers.”
The Scottish government’s cabinet secretary for health and social care, Humza Yousaf, said the easing of restrictions “provides more choice and flexibility for travellers and will provide a boost for the tourism and aviation sector”.
He said: “We have had regular engagement with the UK Government to understand the measures being taken to ensure test results will be communicated rapidly and reliably to both individuals and to contact tracing services.”
The UK government has also been criticised for low levels of genomic sequencing, the lab analysis that can track variants of concern that was used as the main reason for insisting on the tests over the cheaper lateral flow antigen tests.
Yousaf said: “We have also been reassured that any positive results will be genomically-sequenced to quickly identify any variants of concern.
“The decision carefully weighs the benefit to the travel sector against our responsibility to the wider public health, and is a further endorsement of the resounding success of our domestic vaccination roll out.”