Extensive airport testing should be rolled out to reduce returning UK travellers’ quarantine periods, Labour is arguing.
The party says industry-damaging rules should be reviewed, after a series of last-minute changes to countries on the self-isolation list left Brits scrambling to get home and the travel industry warning about lasting damage to the sector.
In a letter to Home Secretary Priti Patel, the opposition said the ‘dire warnings’ from the industry about ‘chaotic’ blanket self-isolation advice meant it was time to review the methods being used to prevent the spread of coronavirus for those returning to the UK. It comes as Police officers claimed that thousands of Brits could be breaking the rules.
Shadow home secretary Nick Thomas-Symonds said a ‘robust testing regime in airports’ could minimise the need for those returning from countries with high Covid-19 prevalence to quarantine for two weeks.
He also said ‘serious concerns’ about the low-level of monitoring of incoming travellers are another reason for needing a review – claiming ‘less than a third of passenger locator forms are checked’.
Meanwhile, former Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair said the Government must use ‘every innovation and capacity’ to ease the problem of the ‘current travel nightmare’, in an article for the Mail on Sunday.
He added: ‘Every decision taken about the easing is a mix of science and judgment, but when it comes to international travel, we need a much better mixture of the two.
‘The insistence on the current quarantine measures is doing huge damage to the British economy – quite unnecessarily so.’
The UK Government has been making weekly decisions in response to rising coronavirus rates in Europe and beyond, opting to reimpose travel restrictions where the risk of infection is escalating.
Holidaymakers in France, Spain, and the Netherlands have all been caught out by the changes in recent weeks as ministers have introduced, in some cases with only a few hours’ notice, regulations forcing those returning to self-isolate for 14 days.
And this week there were divisions between the four nations of the UK, with different rules being implemented for Greece and Portugal depending where tourists return to.
Mr Thomas-Symonds said the quarantine was having a ‘dire’ impact on the travel industry.
In his letter to Ms Patel, he added: ‘I write to call for a rapid review to fix chaotic quarantine arrangements that are losing public confidence and undermining our ability to keep people safe and save jobs.’
He called for the review to outline options for ‘a robust testing regime in airports, and related follow up tests’ that could help minimise the need for a 14 day quarantine, warning of the ‘huge challenges’ for the travel sector and the scale of job losses.
Airlines have also criticised the use of quarantine measures as they face large job cuts due to Covid-inspired lockdowns around the globe reducing travellers numbers.
Virgin Atlantic announced on Friday it plans to axe another 1,150 jobs after completing a £1.2 billion rescue deal.
The further job losses come less than four months after the carrier ditched 3,150 roles and ended its operations at Gatwick Airport due to the collapse in demand caused by the coronavirus pandemic.
A Government spokeswoman said: ‘We are taking clear and decisive action to slow the spread of the virus and save lives.
‘We keep the data for all countries and territories under constant review, and if the public health risk of people returning from a particular country without self-isolating becomes too high we will not hesitate to remove countries from the travel corridors exemptions list.
‘Work is ongoing with clinicians, the devolved administrations and the travel industry to consider if and how testing could be used in the future to reduce the self-isolation period.
‘Any potential change to the testing for arrivals would need to be robust in minimising the chance that positive cases are missed.’
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