Spanish and Greek islands could be added to the UK’s green list as soon as June 8, ministers have suggested, even if their mainlands stay amber.
Robert Courts, the aviation minister, told MPs that the Government would treat popular tourist islands with low Covid rates separately “where possible” as it prepares to reveal the next tranche of destinations that could be added to the quarantine-free list at the start of next month.
Transport Secretary Grant Shapps told the BBC’s Today programme on Wednesday: ”I’ve always said that of course it’s desirable where an aircraft can fly direct to an island, for example, and that island is therefore accessible in that you don’t need to go via the mainland, that you look at that differently. That’s what we did last year as well.”
This would put the Canary, Balearic and Greek islands – all boasting eligible data for the green list – back on the map for holidays ahead of the summer season, in addition to other Mediterranean and even Caribbean isles.
Frontrunners are also understood to include Malta, Grenada, Cayman Islands, Fiji, British Virgin Islands, Finland and Caribbean islands thought to include Antigua and Barbuda, St Kitts and Nevis, Turks and Caicos and Anguilla.
In less promising news, Austria has joined Germany in banning direct flights from the UK over concerns at the rising number of cases of the Indian variant.
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Islands to be considered for green list ‘in principle’, says Shapps
More from the Transport Secretary, speaking to the BBC, on the possible green-listing of holiday islands:
There’s a difference in principle between the way we want to make this work, and the actual data and what the Joint Biosecurity Centre is going to come forward to us with. That’s information I haven’t seen yet.
On the ‘in principle’ part of this, I’ve always said that of course it’s desirable where an aircraft can fly direct to an island, for example, and that island is therefore accessible in that you don’t need to go via the mainland, that you look at that differently. That’s what we did last year as well.
Having said that, the Joint Biosecurity Centre look at a number of different factors in addition to obviously the level of coronavirus: obviously the level of vaccination at that location including on island, their ability to sequence the genome is really important. You find out about variants of concern by doing that.
Sometimes that capacity can be a problem in smaller locations, because you require the science to do it. And the quality of the data. Those are the things the JBC [Joint Biosceurity Centre] will be looking at. I haven’t had that advice from them yet.
We were appealing for people to use common sense,’ says Grant Shapps
Speaking on BBC’s Today programme, Grant Shapps responded to yesterday’s confusion of local travel rules:
I don’t think there’s any reason for me to come on and say it was all perfect, that the communication was excellent.
Really it was an attempt to say things we all know already, because we’ve been going through this for a year and a half now, that the coronavirus only spreads in one way – it’s when we’re in close proximity to each other. And that, therefore, of course, being outdoors, keeping space between us, are the ways to prevent it from spreading more. We were appealing for people to use common sense.
Clearly the lesson out of this is that we do need to make sure that we look at how we communicate effectively with local authorities as and when these things come up in the future, and I know the vaccines minister [Nadhim Zahawi] has taken all of that on board, and said yesterday in the House of Commons that we’ll learn from these experiences as well.
Minister acknowledges mistakes made during pandemic
Transport Secretary Grant Shapps acknowledged mistakes were made in the response to the pandemic but said the Government was responding to an unprecedented situation.
“There was no rulebook and of course there have been mistakes made,” he said.
He told Sky News that Dominic Cummings “has probably tweeted most of what he’s going to say already” ahead of the former No 10 adviser’s appearance before MPs.
“We were making decisions under an unprecedented situation, there’s no rulebook, there’s no textbook to open and see how to deal with a pandemic, the last time the world faced anything like this was 100 years ago with Spanish flu.
“It’s easy to be professors of hindsight.”
On the “very big calls” like the vaccine programme and developing mass testing, Mr Shapps said “we got it right”.
What happened yesterday?
A quick recap of the main stories:
- TUI cancels holidays to red and amber destinations
- Americans warned against travel to Japan
- No quick bounce back for domestic tourism, warns VisitBritain
- Ireland to scrap 14-day quarantine for UK holidaymakers
- Austria bans direct flights from Britain as fears over Indian variant rise