International Travel — House of Lords, 2020-09-09
Topic: Mixed Topics
Charlotte Vere (Conservative, Centre-right): I thank the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, and the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, for their contributions to a small but very important change to our international air travel corridors. The noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, asked "Why now?", with the implication that this could have been done sooner. It could not. The Government have had to put infrastructure in place to deal with challenges that previously were simply not under consideration. As well as putting the infrastructure in place, we had to get the data When we first announced the imposition of the 14-day quarantine period—the self-isolation period—at the same time we set up the joint biosecurity centre. This important group brings together intelligence from across the UK and from abroad. It has been able to build up its resources, particularly its skills and expertise in assessing the risk of inbound travel, which historically had not been a massive feature for government, nor was it required to be so. The building up of these resources in the joint biosecurity centre means that we have a much better ability to analyse the vast quantities of data we are getting, both domestically and from overseas The joint biosecurity centre carries out an assessment on countries and now it will look at individual islands as well. Various things go into the assessment. The noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, asked what the criteria were for inclusion on the list. If I could set out the criteria and percentages, or the various hurdles, for each one included on the list, that would be very simple. However, it is slightly more complicated than that because it is a combined assessment of all sorts of different factors—the estimate of the currently infectious percentage of the population of the country or island, virus incidence rates, trends in the incidence rates, hospitalisations and, sadly, deaths. Other factors include transmission status, testing capacity in a country or island and the quality of the data. All those things are built up and put together to form a picture of whether a country or island should be included on the list. We have got to the stage where we can do this now and we are able to include islands The noble Lord went on to ask how many people coming from overseas travel have had a positive test. I do not have that data to hand. Of course, it is the case that people have had positive tests when they have come from overseas travel. That is why it is clear that the self-isolation policy needs to be in place. People need to fill in the passenger locator form when they arrive in the country. I can tell the noble Lord that, to date, 4,154 cases of failure to fill in the PLF have been referred to the police. Fines have also been issued to people who failed to self-isolate. Slightly more seriously, and it should be recognised by all those who have attempted not to self-isolate, one could get a criminal record if one does not self-isolate. I suspect that that simply is not worth it I turn now to airport testing, which is incredibly important. If we can reduce the 14-day self-isolation period, using any means possible, it would be in everybody’s interests that we do so. I assure the House that this is under active consideration by the Government. PHE is looking at the evidence and emerging data, and this is developing over time. The first pass through airport testing showed that the capture rate for asymptomatic testing at airports on arrival was just 7%. That is barely worth doing. There are other things that we could do but we must reassure ourselves first that they will be robust and will enable us to both reduce the time in self-isolation and protect our loved ones from people who may be at a higher risk of having coronavirus The noble Lord also mentioned the differences between the UK Government and the devolved Administrations. I have said before at the Dispatch Box that health policy is devolved. It is disappointing when there are differences, but we must reflect and respect the agreements reached for the devolved nations. They are perfectly capable of reaching their own conclusions, albeit sometimes on the same set of data. This also demonstrates how subjective some of the data, and its interpretation, is. Therefore, it is not the case that there can be hard targets for countries to be in or out of an international travel corridor I turn now to the impact on aviation. As a former Aviation Minister, I am well aware of the impact on aviation. To date, the sector has used a large amount of the support that the Government have already put in place. For example, the sector has used £1.8 billion from the Bank of England’s CCFF scheme, £283 million from the job retention scheme, and 56,400 staff were furloughed over time. The department is actively discussing what aviation recovery looks like and what additional regulatory or financial help can be put in place. It is a picture that is moving over time. There is a spending review coming up, which will be an opportunity to look at all sorts of different interventions, if they are deemed appropriate Over the summer, having had to cancel two holidays and rebook them, I found that the airlines are adapting. It gives people much more confidence to travel if they have the flexibility to cancel a flight and rebook it. Certainly, with the two airlines I dealt with, both things happened relatively easily. I am really pleased to see that the travel market is beginning to respond to the new world. The number of flights is currently down by about 60%, and loads are at around 65%. There is a long way to go to full recovery, but we are not still in those dark days where there were almost no planes in our sky I turn to additional questions raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, about the travel advice. The FCDO advice will align from now on with the international travel corridors. I recognise that there was time when there was a misalignment. That was not helpful, particularly as they were announced at slightly different times. I think the Government learned from that and we will make sure that we align from now on, if we possibly can The noble Baroness also mentioned the timing of the announcements. To a certain extent we have previously been lulled into a false sense of security of "Oh, it’s Thursday. Let’s look out for the tweet from the Secretary of State and then we’ll know what’s going to happen the following weekend", yet this week we saw something different. The timing of announcements will vary, and we must not think that they are on a weekly basis in all cases. My message to all travellers is they must accept that nowadays travelling is not without risk. If one cannot take the risk of being forced to quarantine on return, it is perhaps better to stay in the UK for holidays for the time being. There is also the argument that the travel industry is doing whatever it can to help. There is a balance to be reached. Passengers must have their eyes open and fully understand the risk that travel advice may change at any time I go back to the intention of the Statement. It is good that we have been able to isolate islands and we will focus very much by prioritising work on the islands to which UK citizens most frequently travel, because clearly there are a number of islands that people are very keen to get back to soon.