No more air bridges? What a colossal waste of time and money this has been
What a colossal and expensive waste of time the whole quarantine arrangement and the Foreign Office’s policy banning overseas holidays have been. As a travel industry which supports hundreds of thousands of jobs has imploded and millions of holidaymakers have been left facing cancelled travel plans and battling for refunds, we have – for weeks – been subjected to a stream of contradictory messages from the Government.
These have been both confusing – are we going to have air bridges, if so, when, and with which countries? And arbitrary – why has the FCO’s advice been applied with such a lack of discrimination, and why has its ban on travel been open-ended, rather than periodically reviewed?
Now we hear that the whole idea of air bridges, allowing reciprocal quarantine-free travel between a limited selection of countries – which was publicly floated by the Transport Secretary at a select committee meeting on May 18 and has now been in discussion for weeks – will be effectively abandoned. The latest information suggests that British travellers will now be free to visit as many as 75 countries without the need to go into quarantine on their return to the UK. The list, apparently to be published tomorrow (believe that when you see it), will coincide with a lifting of the Foreign Office ban to nearly all EU destinations, plus British Overseas Territories like Bermuda and Gibraltar, as well as the likes of Turkey, Thailand, Australia and New Zealand.
The travel industry and travellers are being given almost no notice of this change, which will come into effect on Monday, even though it is happening right in the middle of the peak summer holiday season. Millions of people have flights and holidays already booked before the end of August, and, while the EU made its decision to open its borders more than two weeks ago, British travellers have been left in limbo.
This development also throws into question the whole concept of the two-week quarantine requirement, which was imposed on travellers entering or returning to the UK. Criticised from all sides, but fiercely defended by the Government as an essential measure, it was backed with the threat of £1,000 fines for breaches in England. But not only does it appear to be on the point of being scrapped after only a month, it appears that there has been hardly any enforcement or monitoring of the rules. An investigation by the BBC published today found that, of the 12 police forces that replied to its queries, none has handed out a single fine, with some adding that there had been no enforcement action whatsoever. The only two fines which appear to have been imposed were by the UK Border Force at the Eurotunnel terminal in France.
A Home Office spokesman told the BBC: "We are seeing a high level of compliance and we expect this to continue as the vast majority of people will play their part to help stop the spread of this disease." I wonder how they could possibly know this. These rules have been a complete waste of time and made life extremely and unnecessarily difficult for airlines, tour operators and holidaymakers.
Finally it seems we are to be allowed to travel again, but the journey we have had to endure to get to this point has been far, far more tortuous than it need have been.
Nick Trend will be responding to reader comments below this article at noon (BST) today.
