Ministers faced a huge backlash last night over the reintroduction of pre-departure Covid travel tests amid warnings that more than a million people could be stranded abroad.
The travel sector rounded on the Government after it performed a dramatic U-turn to require travellers to be tested before they return to Britain in a move that threatens to wreck the plans of millions this Christmas.
Tory MPs said the rule change will be a hammer blow to the beleaguered airline industry, and a leading scientific adviser to the Government said the clampdown would make no ‘material difference’ to the spread of the Omicron variant.
The move, which comes into force tomorrow, means travellers will have to provide a negative test result before they can board a flight home. Those who test positive will have to quarantine abroad at their own expense.
Ministers faced a huge backlash last night over the reintroduction of pre-departure Covid travel tests amid warnings that more than a million people could be stranded abroad
A Cabinet source said some officials and scientists had wanted to go even further by insisting that travellers quarantine at home for up to eight days on their return.
‘If it had been up to the health “Blob”, this would have been even more disruptive,’ the source said.
Industry sources predicted more than a million Britons abroad will be scrambling to get a test in order to avoid being stranded.
Travel expert Paul Charles said: ‘People who are overseas are finding it difficult to obtain tests. It’s a weekend, lots of places are closed and these people had no reason to think about the need to get a test to come home.
‘People will effectively be stranded because they can’t get the tests that are now required.’
He added: ‘Tens of thousands of travel industry jobs are threatened. It is beyond belief that no support measures have been announced. That just indicates how knee-jerk these policies are.’
In a podcast interview recorded on Wednesday and posted on Friday, Transport Secretary Grant Shapps (pictured) said ministers did not want to ‘kill off the travel sector again’
The Government U-turn came after a week in which ministers repeatedly insisted pre-departure tests would not be needed. In a podcast interview recorded on Wednesday and posted on Friday, Transport Secretary Grant Shapps said ministers did not want to ‘kill off the travel sector again’.
On Thursday, science minister George Freeman said further travel tests would put the economy ‘on its knees’.
But a source said chief medical officer Chris Whitty had made a powerful case to ministers on Saturday, citing a flight from South Africa to the Netherlands on which 11 passengers had Omicron.
Justice Secretary Dominic Raab insisted that the pre-departure tests were ‘not prohibitive’, but acknowledged it would make only a ‘marginal difference’ to the spread of the new variant.
Professor Mark Woolhouse, who advises the Government’s Sage committee, said it was too late for the measure to slow the spread of the virus. ‘I think that may be a case of shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted,’ he told the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show.
‘If Omicron is here in the UK, and it certainly is, if there’s community transmission in the UK, and it certainly looks that way, then it’s that community transmission that will drive a next wave. It’s too late to make a material difference to the course of the Omicron wave, if we’re going to have one.’
The UK Health Security Agency said a further 86 cases of Omicron had been confirmed in the UK on Sunday, bringing the total to 246.
Tory MP Henry Smith, chairman of the Future of Aviation group of MPs, said the new testing regime was ‘a massive blow that will hit our economy, jobs and place these vital industries into peril just as they were looking to recover’. Alistair Rowland, chairman of the Association of British Travel Agents, said the fragile recovery in the industry had been shattered.
Nigeria has been added to the travel red list after 21 cases of the Omicron variant in England were linked to travel from the west African nation. From 4am today, only British and Irish nationals and residents travelling from Nigeria will be allowed into the UK, and they will be required to isolate in a government-managed quarantine hotel.
Pointless over-reaction is hammer blow to my industry
By Sir Mike Gooley, Chairman and Founder of Trailfinders
The latest flip-flop on travel restrictions, dictating that anyone – British resident or tourist – who enters this country from 4am tomorrow onwards must take a test two days before arrival, is another shattering blow to my industry.
It’s a pointless over-reaction as all the early evidence suggests that Omicron is much less likely to cause death or illness serious enough to warrant hospital treatment.
And although Omicron was first identified in South Africa, it might have been circulating unseen in Britain for weeks. A cluster of cases has been logged in Scotland, and it is now being found all over the UK.
It’s a pointless over-reaction as all the early evidence suggests that Omicron is much less likely to cause death or illness serious enough to warrant hospital treatment
There is no logic in clamping down on visitors from countries where no
