BORIS, LET’S GET BRITAIN FLYING AGAIN!
Costa to cut 1,650 jobs as dire figures show our high street footfall has plunged by 40%
The economy will nosedive until Covid testing is brought in at borders, furious business chiefs said last night.
Demanding urgent action from
Boris Johnson, they warned 14day quarantine was crippling travel, wrecking trade prospects and jeopardising the recovery.
The chief executive of Heathrow accused the Government of ‘doing nothing to protect jobs’.
‘What makes me more angry is that we are putting this country’s future at risk,’ said John Holland-Kaye.
‘We weren’t born as one of the world’s great trading nations. We got there through hard work and ingenuity over decades. And all that work will be lost if we stand by and do nothing to safely open up our borders.’
British Airways boss Willie Walsh said quarantine was ‘throttling business and holiday plans and handcuffing our
economic recovery’. The Daily Mail is leading calls for testing at airports and ports to get the country and economy moving again.
Airlines UK, the Airport Operators Association, Virgin Atlantic, EasyJet, Airbus and Rolls-Royce are all backing the campaign. Gatwick, Manchester, Stansted, Southend, Glasgow, Aberdeen and Southampton airports also pledged their support.
Tony Blair said testing at airports was essential to reopening the economy. The former prime minister added: ‘ Testing after travel will reduce quarantine and eventually replace it altogether.
‘ By maximising all the testing capacity at our disposal and continuing to bring online new, innovative on-the- spot tests, we can do this now. It will be essential to getting international travel back and revitalising the economy.’
Travel industry leaders are furious at the failure to bring in airport testing, with one warning ministers were ‘presiding over the demise of the aviation industry’.
The quarantine system – in which travellers have to self-isolate for 14 days if they arrive in the UK from a ‘red list’ country – has been in place since June. It has caused mayhem for British holidaymakers, tourists from abroad and business travellers.
Countries have been taken off the list – opening up travel bookings – only to be added again a few weeks later when their rate of coronavirus infections increases.
To add to the confusion, the devolved administrations in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are able to impose their own rules. This was dramatically illustrated last night when the UK government decided not to add Portugal or Greece to its quarantine list.
Yet travellers in Wales were told they would have to self-isolate for 14 days if they returned from mainland Portugal or any of six Greek islands.
The number of foreigners coming to Britain has collapsed with devastating consequences for London and other tourist hotspots.
Travel bosses point out that countries including Germany, France, Italy and Iceland have managed to introduce a testing regime to eliminate or reduce the need for quarantine. They have spent months calling for passengers to be tested on arrival and then again a few days later. Experts on the Sage committee endorsed the idea two months ago.
Minutes from the scientific advisory group show it asked Public Health England to consider such a policy after research found tests after five days would pick up 85 per cent of coronavirus cases, and 96 per cent after eight days.
The plan would have allowed people to finish quarantine within a
‘Devastating consequences’
week. However aviation bosses say the Department for Transport has ‘stopped engaging’ on the issue.
Heathrow has even built its own testing centre ready to test thousands of arrivals – but the multi-million pound facility is gathering dust. Transport Secretary Grant Shapps has not even asked to visit.
Sources have blamed the lack of action on Whitehall infighting. One senior Tory MP said that although Mr Shapps supports testing, other departments are concerned about ‘false negative’ results and other potential problems.
Jet2 last night cancelled all flights and holidays to Spain and Croatia for the rest of the summer season. The tour operator blamed the quarantine measures for ruining thousands of holidays. A spokesman said: ‘We urge the Government to continue to help holidaymakers by implementing a targeted approach to travel advice, instead of the current blanket approach.’
The quarantine rules are being opposed by more than 80 MPs, half of them Conservatives.
Steve Baker, Tory former minister and MP for High Wycombe, said: ‘If the Government can provide fast accurate lateral-flow tests at airports to enable people to avoid quarantine when they come back, then they must deploy them widely.
‘As an MP for a constituency west of Heathrow, I see through my mailbox the devastating impact of coronavirus on the ground crew, the pilots and the cabin crew.’
The first international flight in more than five months landed in China’s capital yesterday with the passengers greeted by airport staff in full hazmat suits.
Initially the Chinese are allowing flights from Thailand, Cambodia, Pakistan, Greece, Denmark, Austria, Sweden and Canada – countries deemed low risk.
Eleven cases were reported yesterday in China, where the coronavirus first emerged late last year.
COFFEE chain Costa will cut up to 1,650 jobs after deserted city centres decimated its sales.
It said 300 of its 2,700 cafes remain shut because there are still ‘high levels of uncertainty’ about when trade will return.
The cuts, a tenth of its total staff, come despite the chain getting a boost from the Eat Out To Help Out scheme and the cut in VAT to 5 per cent.
It furloughed all its staff during the pandemic in the hope workers and tourists would return to its city centre locations.
But the decision by many large businesses to keep the majority of their workers at home is starving its cafes of business.
The wider scale of the problem is made clear today with a warning from industry leaders about the devastating blow to the economy caused by office blocks remaining empty in city centres.
Figures from the British Retail Consortium paint a grim picture of ‘ghost cities’ where the number of potential customers has fallen dramatically amid the fall- out from coronavirus.
Footfall in traditional high streets was down by 41.7 per cent in August compared to the same month last year, with smaller falls in retail parks and shopping centres.
Costa, which was founded in 1971 in London and is now owned by Coca-Cola, proposes to cut jobs by removing the assistant store manager role across its stores.
Neil Lake, the chain’s UK managing director, said: ‘Today’s announcement to our store teams was an extremely difficult decision to make. Our baristas are the heart of the Costa business and I am truly sorry that many now face uncertainty following today’s news.’
The company has frozen pay rises at its head office and stopped all non- essential spending as part of its cost-cutting efforts.
It has 1,600 wholly-owned stores and 16,000 staff in the UK, and 1,200 cafes overseas. Another 1,100 British outlets, employing 10,500 staff, were unaffected by yesterday’s announcement as they are run as franchises.
The job cuts follow an intervention this week by the bosses of 80 hospitality businesses, including Greene King, Pizza Express, Caffe Nero, as they warned that working from home has triggered an ‘ economic emergency’.
In a letter to the Prime Minister, they said the failure to get staff back to the office posed an ‘existential’ threat to businesses and threatened to send the economy into a ‘downward spiral’.
In total 730,000 jobs have been lost during the pandemic, according to official data, and economists believe unemployment will rise to 3.5million this year.
Yesterday’s figures from the British Retail Consortium show that in London – where staff in many City institutions, banks, public bodies and Whitehall departments are working from home – saw the biggest drop in footfall of 46.4 per cent on last year. Scotland, where there has been a particularly strict approach to lockdown from the SNP government, saw a fall of 42 per cent. And the North West, where Greater Manchester has been at the centre of a controversial lockdown, was down by 40.2 per cent.
Millions are now working at home, which is a disaster for businesses relying on office workers for trade, as well as the finances of the public transport system.
Helen Dickinson, chief executive of the BRC, warned of more job losses and said the Prime Minister should actively campaign for a return to offices.
‘Footfall remained well below normal levels in August,’ she said. ‘In-store discounting and demand for schoolwear helped lure some customers back to the shops, but with many office blocks still empty and much of the public avoiding public transport, footfall is not returning to towns and city centres and this is having a devastating effect on the local economies in these areas.
‘While many businesses have been investing in making workplaces safer, we are unlikely to see significant growth in footfall while Government advice remains to “work from home if you can”.
‘ Unless this changes, more should be done to encourage people to travel and reassure them that public transport is safe.
‘Government should also recognise that, while footfall is so low, many businesses will not be able to manage their fixed costs – rent and business rates in particular – and unnecessary job losses and store closures will follow.’
‘Extremely difficult decision to make’