Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, with reference to his Department's guidance, Coronavirus (covid-19): travel corridors, published on 3 July 2020, what plans he has to include the Maldives on that list; and what criteria his Department uses to decide which countries to include on that list.

The Government takes a range of factors into account when deciding which countries to add or remove from the Travel Corridor list. This includes:

• an estimate of the proportion of the population that is currently infectious in each country
• virus incidence rates and rates of change
• trends in incidence and deaths
• transmission status and international epidemic intelligence
• information on a country’s testing capacity, testing regime and test positivity rate
• an assessment of the quality of the data available
• effectiveness of measures being deployed by a country
• volume of travel between the UK and that country

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We recognise how important travel and tourism is for the Maldives. However, inbound travel from the Maldives presents a high risk to the UK given continued elevated incidence of COVID-19 indicating community transmission of the virus. The Government keeps the list of travel corridors under constant review. We will make further exemptions when we are sure that we can do so safely and responsibly.