Sturgeon ‘is putting our summer holidays on hold’
NICOLA Sturgeon was accused of causing summer holiday travel chaos in a row over quarantine rules yesterday.
Transport Secretary Grant Shapps suggested Scotland’s First Minister was the reason plans to allow people to travel freely between approved countries had been delayed until at least next week.
He told SNP MPs to demand that Holyrood backs the plans as quickly as possible.
He said: “I’m very keen to get the devolved administrations, including the Scottish Government, on board so we can get this thing announced.”
An announcement on the so-called air bridges has been repeatedly pushed back at what would normally have been the peak holiday season.
The Government is responsible for border controls but health protection issues are a devolved matter, so must be supported by Scottish regulations.
Health Secretary Matt Hancock set out the latest proposed list of air bridge countries to Scottish, Welsh and Northern Ireland politicians on Wednesday.
But Ms Sturgeon balked at the suggestion she was to blame. She said the four chief medical officers representing each home nation had agreed “further work” was needed.
She added: “The UK Government should spend less time trying to pick pointless fights, so all of us can just focus on the task ahead at hand.”
Travellers to around 75 countries are expected to be exempt from quarantine restrictions when the list is finally published. Arrivals to
the UK – including returning Britons – are currently required to self-isolate for a fortnight to reduce the spread of coronavirus.
The proposed rules are expected to lift the Foreign Office ban on non-essential travel to nearly all EU destinations.
Welcomed
British territories including Bermuda and Gibraltar, as well as Turkey, Thailand, Australia and New Zealand will also be allowed, as they are deemed low-risk.
Paul Charles, chief executive of travel consultancy The PC Agency and member of the Quash Quarantine campaign group, said: “It’s time the Government levelled with the British people on its travel policy, instead of going round and round in circles before making any decision.
“But it’s to be welcomed that it is effectively abandoning travel corridors and blanket quarantine.
“Each day that goes by without confirmation means fewer bookings and more job losses.”
BRITAIN’S travel industry is in the throes of a crisis that threatens to strip families of their livelihoods but political infighting may be to blame for the delay in giving the green light to summer getaways.
The industry is desperate for the list of countries to which people can travel to be announced. Likewise, parents who would normally have booked a summer trip months ago want to know if a holiday this year might just be possible after all.
Transport Secretary Grant Shapps signalled that Scotland’s government is to blame for the fog of uncertainty but the Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon denies being a “block”.
It will be a fiasco if businesses go bust and yet more jobs are lost because the rival governments of the UK cannot act as one when the whole country risks seeing a health crisis spiral into an economic catastrophe.