Covid-19: International Travel

Ben Bradshaw Excerpts

Monday 24th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[Grant Shapps]

I am in constant contact with my equivalent numbers around the world. We are having frequent conversations, in particular with G7 countries—we are, of course, chairing the presidency of the G7—with which I speak regularly. The biggest thing that could happen elsewhere is for them to reach our level of booster protection in particular. Our 37 million booster jabs have provided us with a wall of protection. Once that is available elsewhere, that will help to get international travel moving even faster.

[Mr Ben Bradshaw (Exeter) (Lab)]

I warmly welcome today’s announcement. As the Secretary of State knows, the Transport Committee has been unanimous in calling for this for some time. Could he explain, though, why he is keeping the passenger locator form? It is a massive irritant to people. It is much longer than the EU form and is very complicated. I hope he is not keeping it because he is relaxing the rules for the unvaccinated. That would be very unfair on the vaccinated. Will he reassure this House that, given what the hon. Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy) has said—namely, that compared with domestic health measures, these onerous testing requirements and draconian travel restrictions have been shown to have absolutely zero impact on the spread of covid and omicron over the past two years in this country—the Government will never resort to this policy again?

[Grant Shapps]

I appreciate the right hon. Gentleman’s comments. I also heard him making approving noises while I made my statement. He will want to speak to his Front-Bench colleagues, who, unlike Government Members, have consistently wanted us to go further and faster on closing the borders. We have tried to balance it against the critical nature of our island status as a nation.

The right hon. Gentleman asks a very good question about the passenger locator form and why we are keeping it. Members may not be aware that it is our only way of distinguishing between those who are vaccinated and those who are unvaccinated when they use e-gates to come into this country. A lot of work has been done to automate the e-gate so that it reads the passport number, refers back to the passenger locator form and knows whether that individual has had to take a pre-departure test—which people who have not been vaccinated have to take—and, indeed, whether they have to take a day 2 test. It is there for a critical reason. I entirely agree with the right hon. Gentleman about the complexity of the passenger locator form, and I committed in my statement to going back through it and simplifying it, which is much easier to do now that we have the status of fully vaccinated people not requiring any tests at all.