International Travel

Yvette Cooper Excerpts

Monday 20th September 2021 Commons Chamber

[Grant Shapps]

I pay tribute to the excellent work that my hon. Friend does as trade envoy to Kenya. I am delighted that Kenya has come off the red list. As I mentioned, we will provide details for how countries can onboard themselves to meet our requirements, and I look forward to adding to the list of 50 countries where people who are fully vaccinated will be able to come and go very much more easily. I look forward to working with her on that plan.

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)]

We all hope that our vaccines will prove effective against any new variants so that we can all get back fully to normal, but we also have to be incredibly vigilant against any possible new variant that develops and that is resistant to our vaccines. The Secretary of State will know that in previous waves—at the beginning or with the delta variant—we have not had either sufficient surveillance or a fast enough response from Government to prevent those variants from spreading. What can he say about his new surveillance regime, both in terms of testing and response, that will prevent those problems from happening again, especially when it looks as though the testing and genomic sequencing is being downgraded?

[Grant Shapps]

I thank the right hon. Lady, who approaches this from a very wise perspective. The first thing I would say is that of course everybody will appreciate that we now have over nine out of 10 adults with at least one jab and over eight out of 10—83%, I think—of adults fully vaccinated. Of course, as that picture has been replicated around the world, that makes it easier to allow and open up international travel, and it is part of the balance.

The second thing to say is that using lateral flow tests, which provide virtually instant results, means that people may not be out and about for an extra day or perhaps more before they get their results. That of course has to be factored against the fact that a lateral flow test is known to be less observant—with different specificity and sensitivity rates—than a PCR test. The scientists have taken all of that into account in providing ideas for this regime. Of course, it is critically important that a lateral flow test is then backed up by a PCR. It will be, and we will also be talking more about requirements for ensuring that the lateral flow test has been properly taken.