Comment: We need decisive action to support the travel industry
This first appeared in the Daily Telegraph - https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/12/09/quarantine-hotels-could-axed-fully-jabbed-isolating-home/
We need decisive action to support the travel industry - Henry Smith MP, Chair of the APPG for the Future of Aviation
The announcement over the weekend of further Covid-19 restrictions on international travel have yet again placed our aviation, travel, and tourism industries in peril, just a few weeks after their recovery looked set to begin. We should make no mistake, the damaging impacts of these restrictions are real, wide ranging and are already beginning to bite.
After two years of limited international travel, restrictions, bans, and sky-high testing costs many families had hoped to reunite with loved ones this Christmas – hopes that are now dashed and grounded. Last week our airports saw a significant fall in passenger numbers, even before the reintroduction of pre-departure tests, and the Scottish Tourism Association are reporting 85 per cent cancellations for all inbound travel in December & January.
That these restrictions have been brought in with no additional support for our aviation, travel and tourism industries is simply unacceptable and the Government must step up and provide support now that protects our vital international connectivity sectors and their employees. The Chancellor took bold action with the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme, which protected thousands of jobs aviation, travel, and tourism as recently as September. We need the same decisive action now.
With the weekend seeing many including leading scientists questioning whether reintroducing tests and travel bans will have any impact whatsoever on transmission, we also need the Government to set out why singling out travel is needed and what the criteria is for the removal of these restrictions, with a roadmap for their removal essential.
But the challenges go beyond the restrictions. The re-introduction of the red list is sadly a proportionate and sensible approach but continuing to subject those who are fully vaccinated to a hotel quarantine policy is not sustainable and neither is the astronomical cost. The Government must work now to allow the fully vaccinated to isolate at home and be monitored by the NHS Test & Trace service and bring down the cost of hotel quarantine whilst it remains necessary.
They must also ensure that the costs of testing are kept under control or made free. We must avoid the profiteering that we saw throughout the summer alongside the emergence of rogue providers who promised much but failed to deliver. Poor service and delayed test results damage our public health response, just when the Government says we need it most.
We must never forget that these restrictions bring with them not only economic damage, but real human impacts. Those working in the industry will now be worried about their jobs, businesses face the threat of closure once again and families are facing up to a second Christmas unable to see loved ones who live abroad.
There should be no doubt: we will need to guard against Covid going forward, but we will also need to guard against the damage that restrictions can bring. After two years of restrictions and historically low passenger numbers, our aviation, travel, and tourism sectors once again find themselves facing an uncertain future. We must be left in no doubt that a failure to protect them now and set out how and when these restrictions will be lifted. Not doing so, will leave these vital industries as a shadow of their former selves and set back our national recovery.
The risks are simply too high, we cannot afford to sit back and allow these restrictions to cause further damage to an industry that has been battered by the pandemic.
Henry Smith MP, is Chair of the APPG for the Future of Aviation