Emma Hardy
Main Page: Emma Hardy (Labour - Kingston upon Hull West and Haltemprice)Department Debates - View all Emma Hardy's debates with the Department of Health and Social Care
(3 years, 7 months ago)
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Emma Hardy (Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle) (Lab) [V]
I want to highlight quickly how our poorly drawn-up covid self-isolation and quarantine regulations are causing difficulties for UK businesses in competition with EU companies that are following different regulations. That is putting UK businesses at a disadvantage.
I was contacted by David Fletcher from GEV Group, which has its headquarters in my constituency. It is a market leader in critical field repair services to the wind energy industry, specialising in wind turbine blade repair, and it exports its services all over Europe, the US and the far east. Of course, it has had to reorganise and reprioritise services due to the pandemic, but in some cases, as hon. Members can imagine, where wind turbine blades have suffered significant damage, that cannot wait.
The company of course understands the need for covid security and taking precautions, but it finds itself at a significant disadvantage to its European competitors, which are operating under a different approach to travel for frontier workers. Essentially, the EU guidelines provide specific instructions for posted and frontier workers, noting that health screening must be carried out under the same conditions as for nationals exercising the same occupation.
GEV informs me that the UK guidelines have a much looser definition of frontier workers and do not appear to have considered all the likely circumstances they will face. The key issue for GEV is the line in the UK guidance that states that travel must be on a weekly basis. Its technicians typically travel on a fortnightly rotation, as they are stationed offshore on a vessel for that duration. That means that, upon return, they have to observe the eight-day quarantine period, which has led to most of the company’s workforce not wanting to travel. As a consequence, it is losing work to its European counterparts.
I urge the Minister to look at realigning the rules with the EU so that GEV and other UK companies that export services can remain competitive. I am more than happy to write to her on this matter, and I really hope that this simple issue can be resolved very quickly.