Red tape hampers our return to travel
The Prime Minister’s global travel taskforce will announce today that quarantine will be removed from a small number of green-list countries, probably as of May 17, and that the number of coronavirus tests required from travellers will be reduced. This is welcome progress, no doubt, but the proposed travel regime would remain deeply onerous, particularly in its insistence upon the more expensive PCR test. We have to ensure that the post-pandemic world is not worse than the one we left behind.
Caution makes sense when it comes to travel to countries with a high rate of infection; less so when the rate is very low and/or immunisation is prevalent. Britons who have already been vaccinated will ask why they even have to be tested, let alone be forced to undergo a PCR test upon return currently costing around £120 per person. As with the reopening of pubs and restaurants for outside business on April 12, the relaxation of the rules comes with so many strings attached that it might not have the desired effect.
The Prime Minister said on Tuesday that the travel regime should be easy and cheap, yet this solution would relegate foreign holidays to the realm of the rich. A cheaper lateral flow test is deemed sufficient to visit a care home, so why not for returning from a holiday in a country deemed low risk, such as Israel? If a PCR test is strictly necessary, could it not be provided en masse at the airport?
The public might assume the goal of all this red tape is to prevent the entry into Britain of dangerous new variants, but unless one attempts to seal the borders completely, which we are not doing (haulage drivers will still be coming, along with seasonal workers), this is impossible.
A choice has to be made between obedience to the precautionary principle, which can only be enforced with heavy-handed methods – economically disastrous, harmful for mental health, unsustainable – and learning to live with Covid and make personal decisions based upon a balance of risk.
Anti-terror procedures at airports, installed in reaction to the attacks on September 11 2001, are still in place today. Can the Government reassure voters that the lockdown will not undermine the liberty of travel longer than is absolutely necessary?