Editorial Comment:
There is a certain uncharitable Schadenfreude to be derived from the fact that Grant Shapps is on holiday in Spain just as the Government reimposes quarantine on travellers arriving from that country.
The Transport Secretary is the architect of air bridges, a suggestion he made weeks ago to avoid a 14-day isolation of everyone arriving in the UK. The notion that people coming from countries with lower levels of Covid-19 should be placed in quarantine was always hard to justify. Indeed, while the UK has fewer new cases than Spain, the difference is not great – about 700 as against 900.
Moreover, most Spanish regions have fewer infections than here and the spikes are mainly around Barcelona and Aragon. Does it make sense, therefore, to require holidaymakers to isolate when they return from, say, the Balearics or the Canary Islands, where there are hardly any Covid cases? After all, the aim of travel corridors was to obviate the need for a blanket approach that was both unfair to some countries with low infection rates and excessively restrictive on British tourists.
The decision to reimpose quarantine on travellers from Spain was taken hastily at a meeting of ministers on Saturday. They were clearly mindful of the fact that it was skiers returning from Italian resorts who brought most cases home to Britain in the winter. But given the number of Brits who have headed for Spain in good faith in recent days, was it not possible to differentiate between the areas where the infection is rising and those that are almost Covid-free?
The Canaries have had fewer cases than almost any region in the world and are 1,400 miles from Catalonia. Is it reasonable to quarantine people returning from the islands when Foreign Office advice against non-essential travel refers only to “mainland Spain”?
Dominic Raab, the Foreign Secretary, calling the move “inconvenient”, invited plaudits for the Government’s decisiveness, but was haste an enemy of good sense? If this is to be the reaction to spikes anywhere in the world, the prospects for an already decimated travel industry are bleak. The Government modified its catch-all quarantine plans to kick start foreign tourism and associated businesses. But with cases now rising in Italy, France and Germany – and similar quarantines likely to be imposed as a result – “staycations” are beginning to look a far more attractive proposition.