International Travel

Gavin Newlands Excerpts

Monday 20th September 2021 Commons Chamber

[Grant Shapps]

My hon. Friend is an excellent Chair of the Select Committee on Transport—always tough, but fair. He has rightly pointed out that there is likely to be a big expansion in the amount of transatlantic and other aviation. Things such as the pre-departure test form will be greatly simplified by not having to prove a pre-departure test at check-in. On the other side, coming back into the UK, it is Border Force that runs those services. It has spent a lot of time over the summer integrating pre-departure tests, vaccine status and other information into its e-gates. It is now trying to incorporate that. I will certainly be reflecting his comments in discussions with the Home Office, which runs Border Force and will want to make things as smooth as possible as the numbers pick up.

[Gavin Newlands (Paisley and Renfrewshire North) (SNP)]

For months, the sector, airlines, airports, unions and politicians from all parts of the House have called for an extension of furlough, which ends in just 10 days’ time, having essentially given up on the sector-specific support deal promised by the Secretary of State and the Chancellor. The Government again refused to listen, but, miraculously and coincidentally, the scientific evidence arrived to allow the UK Government to relax the rules just four days later. Will the Secretary of State outline what clinical advice he has received on removing pre-departure PCR tests and on the change to lateral flow testing from PCR testing on day two?

Testing international travellers before and after travel is an important part of Scotland’s border health surveillance to minimise the risk of importing variants of concern. The Scottish Government, and indeed the Welsh Government, want to maintain a four-nations approach to international travel restrictions, but they will need to consider carefully the risks associated with the proposed changes to testing before aligning with the UK Government. The First Minister will provide a further covid update to the Scottish Parliament later this week.

The Scottish Government’s changes, with sensible safeguards built in, recognise the success of the vaccination programme and will provide a welcome boost to Scottish tourism. A four-nations approach is obviously preferable, not least because Scottish travellers, as we have seen, will travel down to English airports to fly, and that may affect routes and could further job losses at airports such as Glasgow airport in my constituency. However, the Scottish Government are absolutely right to look at the evidence in detail before making such an important decision.

Moreover, the last time that there was a divergence in policy, the UK Government went against the scientific advice that the Scottish Government followed, and the result was the importation of the delta variant with huge numbers of passengers arriving in England from India. In many cases, they went on to Scotland. If there is to be a divergence, however temporary, will the Secretary of State work with airports in England and the Scottish Government to ensure that the correct checks are carried out on passenger arrival paperwork, so that passengers cannot arrive in England to travel on to Scotland to circumvent the different rules?

[Grant Shapps]

I think it would be wrong not at least to acknowledge that the delta variant has got to every single country in the world—including Australia, which does not allow its own citizens to come back freely into the country, even with quarantine. By throwing that in, the hon. Gentleman rather weakened the rest of his argument. The Joint Biosecurity Centre is so called because it works with the devolved Administrations. The chief medical officers work together as part of that set up and, as he surely must know, provide us with the same advice to consider.

The hon. Gentleman’s first point was on the furlough scheme, which has been of enormous assistance to aviation everywhere, including in Scotland. The very best help we could give to Scottish aviation workers and others would be to stop curtailing aviation and travel industries in the recovery. Those are not my words. Edinburgh airport said that the Scottish Government’s

“decision to diverge yet again…further”

curtails

“Scotland’s aviation and travel industries in their recovery”.

It leaves travel agents in Scotland, led by LAH Travel’s Linda Hill Miller, saying that it will be a “very bleak winter” in Scotland if the policy does not shift.