SUMMER HOLIDAYS ON HOLD
Four-nations approach only ‘viable’ way to avoid quarantine confusion
A SCOTLAND-ONLy approach to international travel is ‘not viable’, a health expert has warned.
Linda Bauld, professor of public health at the University of Edinburgh, said a four-nations approach was vital to make travel easier and avoid confusion over quarantine measures.
She said: ‘If people can go from England and we can avoid quarantine here in a hotel by going via the Common Travel Area, travellers are going to go via England, aren’t they?
‘So it’s tough. This is one issue where the UK really has to co-ordinate its plans because it is not viable otherwise.’
Professor Bauld added: ‘So from a public health perspective I completely get the risks, and obviously that would be something I would be strongly advising people to consider – the risk to them and others. But I do hope for both the sector and the public that we can sort this out.’
Speaking to the BBC, Professor Bauld said vaccine passports may also be needed to make foreign travel easier.
She said: ‘If the UK Government does go ahead with the green list, it will be (to) countries like Israel, Iceland or places where you have low infection.
‘I know vaccine certificates are very controversial, but just to be clear, for international travel they are a lot less controversial.
‘I think there’s much broader acceptance of that and I think that will be the way ahead. But if we move in that direction we do need to think about global equity around provision of vaccines and rolling that out.’
Meanwhile, Alan Glen, from the Scottish Passenger Agents Association, also told the BBC’s Good Morning Scotland that an appetite for travel will return quickly thanks to the ‘cautious and risk-based approach’ taken.
He said: ‘It is very much riskbased and not just throwing the borders open, letting other variants in – these measures are there to filter out those problems.
‘This is very much going to be a slow-burn approach to opening up travel.’
Mr Glen, who said air traffic travel was down 92 per cent, also backed a four-nations approach.
He added: ‘There’s no way it’s going to work in Scotland operating a different system from England when you can freely travel across a border and fly out of an English airport.
‘People are booking for later on in the year but as soon as we see some movement we can build some confidence back in there, with people travelling freely.’
The aviation sector also backs a four-nations approach to travel.
A spokesman for AGS Airports, which owns Aberdeen International, Glasgow and Southampton airports, said: ‘That’s the point we’ve been making to the Scottish Government. There has to be a four-nations approach to travel.
‘We saw what happened last year when we didn’t adopt that approach and there were cases where you could fly to a particular country abroad from one part of the UK but not from another.
‘All that does is cause confusion for passengers.
‘If we were to find ourselves in a position where England would adopt a certain approach and
Scotland didn’t, passengers would leave in their droves and head down to airports in England. It wouldn’t serve any purpose, from a health protection point of view.’
Scottish Tourism Alliance chief executive Marc Crothall said: ‘Unfortunately, domestic tourism alone is not going to be sufficient.
‘In-bound tourism represents around 30 per cent of our total mix and to replace the value of spend that an international tourist brings over the course of the year, we would have to try and accommodate an additional seven-and-ahalf to eight million additional overnight domestic stays.
‘Clearly that’s not going to be possible in the current climate.’
Scottish Conservative transport spokesman Graham Simpson said the travel industry in Scotland was ‘crying out for some clarity from SNP Ministers’. He said thousands of jobs in the sector were at risk.
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Boris Johnson has indicated there will be some ‘opening up’ of foreign travel on May 17, although he stressed caution, saying: ‘I don’t think the people of this country want to see an influx of disease from anywhere else.’
The European Commission has also proposed an easing of restrictions on non-essential travel into the EU, allowing people to travel there who have had a Covid vaccination at least 14 days before the date of their arrival.
‘Crying out for some clarity’