A committee whose job it is to scrutinise the work of the UK’s
Department for Transport has said that a recent report into the reopening of
international travel failed to strike a balance between the threat to public
health and risks to the economy.
The transport select committee, headed by Huw Merriman MP, said
the recent report of the global travel taskforce failed to set out clear rules
and did not offer certainty to the travel industry. The committee has now called for clarification of the Government’s
proposed traffic-light system of destinations, the introduction of an
affordable Covid testing regime and action to cut extended waiting time at
borders that have been seen at UK airports.
Merriman said: “The
aviation and travel sectors were crying out for a functional report, setting
out clear rules and offering certainty. This is not it. Where the industry
craved certainty, the Government has failed to provide it.”
After reading the report, members of
the committee concluded that “it included insufficient detail to allow
businesses to prepare for, and travellers to engage in, the planned safe
restart of international travel on 17 May”.
The committee has made a number of
recommendations to the Government as a result. It calls for Government to:
• populate
the traffic-light framework with destination countries by 1 May 2021 at the
latest and announce that classification of destination countries in a statement
to Parliament;
• explain
the criteria and mechanism by which countries will move between risk categories
by 1 May 2021 at the latest;
• facilitate an affordable testing regime that
supports public health and safe travel for everyone by maximising the role of
antigen tests and ensuring the provision of affordable polymerase chain
reaction (PCR) tests, where required; and
• act
immediately to reduce waiting times and queues at the UK border, including
working bilaterally with partner countries to agree mutual recognition of
travel health certification, deploying more staff at the border, processing
passenger locator forms before passengers arrive in the UK and establishing an
efficient system based on a single digital app to process health certification
submitted in a range of languages.
Merriman added, “This is a missed opportunity for the
Government to capitalise on the UK’s world-leading ‘vaccine dividend’. How can
it be right that hauliers, arriving from parts of the globe where the vaccine
roll-out is slow, are able to use cheaper lateral flow testing whilst a trip
back from Israel requires a PCR test which is four times as expensive?
“This was an opportunity to provide a global lead with
standardised rules on international health certification and promoting
app-based technology, making the processes at borders more secure and less time
consuming. The urgent situation facing the aviation and travel sectors warrants
a clear action plan to green light our travel – and the Government must
urgently set it out."