Small steps forward and one illogical stride backwards

THE South West’s biggest tourist attraction is welcoming visitors today, and a Government minister has praised Cornwall as a world-class holiday destination.

The culture secretary, Oliver Dowden, has also said he will do all he can to encourage Britons to take a holiday in our seaside towns.

On any normal day there would be a collective shrug at such statements. They would hardly count as news.

The Eden Project pulls in a million visitors a year; Mr Dowden’s remit includes promoting tourism, and well, Cornwall has been a favourite place to have a break since the holiday trade began.

However these are hardly normal times. We are a nation in shock from the attack of the coronavirus and the South West, with its dependency on hospitality in general and tourism in particularly, has been arguably the hardest hit region.

But the patient is slowly rising to their feet and taking small steps back to normality.

That journey seems long and hard but Mr Dowden’s re-statement of the plan to reopen tourism from July 4 is welcome, as is his unqualified support for the October bank holiday, as proposed by the promotion body, Visit Britain.

Such an additional holiday is badly needed. The UK has fewer public holidays than many other countries, and they are ‘top’ heavy: we could so do with one in the summer but the later part of the year is short, too.

And right now the whole nation could do with a lift and something to look forward to. In other times the wider business community might grumble that bank holidays are good for tourism and hospitality but hit economic output in other sectors.

For once, though, the hardest hit businesses, those who went into lockdown first and are among the last to emerge, should be prioritised. And so should the national mood.

In other good news we learned that Cornwall Airport Newquay is gaining a link to Teesside, which should boost tourist numbers coming into the South West.

There are many uncertainties ahead. Among them is how Priti Patel’s ill-thought-out quarantining of arrivals into the UK, including returning Britons, will play out. The Home Secretary’s measure, which comes into effect from Monday, will ensure that the tap of high-spending tourists from overseas is turned off tight. It will also probably deter Britons from taking their holidays abroad – which should, in theory, bring a staycation boost.

But where is the logic behind the quarantine? The UK has a much higher infection rate than the rest of Europe, so the risk is one of export, not import. And if the measure is such a good idea, why was it not used back in the late winter or early spring, when the UK had low rates and so desperately needed stay that way? Not only is this a bad rule, but it is an unenforceable one – the police have said they cannot be responsible for making sure that people self-isolate and border officials will be carrying out no more than random checks.

The rule is open to abuse, and that undermines fath and trust in Government policy at a time when we all need to be in this together.