Dear Reader,

THE time has come for Transport Secretary Grant Shapps to speak his truth — not to Oprah in a dappled, rose-scented garden but to those of us who hope to travel this summer and to the travel industry as a whole, which will need time to prepare before the red light turns to green, hopefully on May 17.

He needs to confess that he’s been wrong to keep insisting that it’s too early — ‘illegal’ even — to book a break, and that he will endeavour to master his brief in the tricky months ahead.

But it won’t happen and the danger is that Britain — despite not just procuring but largely inventing Covid vaccines — will appear to be on the back foot just as the likes of Spain, Greece, Cyprus, Portugal and now France all make positive noises about international travel.

Never judge a man by his Zoom backdrop, but what on earth is Shapps doing with that Union flag behind him in one corner, a red ministerial briefcase wide open (‘such a workload, I don’t even have time to close it’) in the other and a Vote Shapps poster poking out from the shelf? Who does he take us for? Certainly, Jet2 isn’t listening. The budget airline’s current TV advertisement specifically spells it out with a caption that reads ‘Book now for this summer’.

April 12 is the new magical date when Shapps’s taskforce will tell us what the future holds for overseas holidays. Let’s hope there is special mention of cruising, which is the subject of our special report this week.

The facts are these: The average age of those who book cruises in the UK is 57 and by the end of next week the majority of those over the age of 56 will have had one jab and many more elderly cruisers will have been offered their second ones, too.

You could argue — and the cruise lines do — that a cruise offers one of the safest of holiday options. Let’s hope someone pops this thought into Shapps’s red box.