Our response to the Travel Day of Action, 23 June 2021
A letter from Robert Dee, NDE co-founder to Alec Shelbrooke, MP for Elmet and Rothwell
I have worked in travel all my adult life. The travel industry has given me and my family great personal opportunities, and professionally it has allowed me to support other businesses, develop careers and make an economic and social contribution to this country, and to countries beyond our borders.
Today I should be in Parliament Square, lobbying the UK Government for support for the travel industry, covering both the outbound and inbound sectors. However I cannot travel to London today. In fact I cannot travel outside my front door. Even though I have had two vaccinations, and almost daily I am testing negative, I have to self isolate because a family member has caught the Delta variant of the Covid virus, a variant that was allowed to come into the country due to this government’s policy of giving India five days’ notice before being added to the red list on 23 April. This policy allowed 16 direct flights from India, and many more indirect ones, to land in the UK before the deadline, at a time when the UK had 103 cases of the variant already identified in the UK.
My case is symptomatic of how the UK is now viewed on the world stage. Although we are amongst the most vaccinated nations, we are being treated as a pariah due to increasing numbers of cases all stemming from this poor decision making. Former Prime Minister, Theresa May, commented earlier this month “We now have over 50 per cent of the adult population vaccinated — a wonderful programme — yet we’re more restricted on travel than we were last year.’
Although we are amongst the most vaccinated nations, we are being treated as a pariah due to increasing numbers of cases all stemming from this poor decision making.
In terms of opening up travel we are also falling behind the EU even though the vaccination programme there is running around 10% behind the UK’s. The EU has plans for a digital Covid passport to come into effect on 1st July and several countries already allow anyone, including from the UK, to enter freely if they can demonstrate that they have been double jabbed. Last week my business partner, Tine Murn, travelled to Slovenia, and was allowed entry on the basis that he had received two vaccinations. However if he were to return to the UK he would be obliged to quarantine for 10 days, even though the rate of infection in Slovenia is half that of the UK. As of 21st June the UK recorded 96.7 cases per 100,000 of the population in the previous 7 days whereas Slovenia recorded just 25.7. In fact everywhere in Europe, with the exception of Georgia has lower rates than the UK with many countries in the Balkans (Montenegro, Croatia, Moldova, Serbia, Bosnia-Herzogovina, North Macedonia, Romania, Kosovo and Albania) recording rates of less than 20, the figure which the EU last year said was the number at which they would allow travel, and that at a time when we didn’t have a vaccine.
On the basis of these figures it makes no sense both to continue with the amber list in its current format and to maintain the quarantine restrictions for arrivals from destinations with a lower prevalence of Covid, and therefore a lower risk, than our own country.
This restriction on movement to and from the amber list is the greatest barrier to travel and needs to be removed. The data does not support the maintenance of restrictions, and based on what Huw Merriman, the Chair of the Transport Select Committee, said in a recent interview with Travel Weekly, the advice given to the government is being overlooked for political reasons, stemming, one suspects, from the poor decision making over the Delta variant. It is my view that the people of the UK and the travel industry in particular, is paying the price for government dithering in the past.
I know that people will say that we need to stop variants coming in. However this is not borne out by the government’s own data. Two days ago a report was published by the Department of Health and Social Care saying 23,465 people who travelled from Amber list countries were tested for Covid and only 89 had tested positive. This equates to just one in 264, and we don’t know what the vaccination status of these people was at the time. Significantly, none was carrying variants. Clearly amber list countries pose little risk, displaying no variants of concern, and a change in policy is needed and indeed vital to opening up prospects for the travel industry.
As Mrs May said in her speech in Parliament, “Variants will keep on coming. There will be new variants every year. If the government’s position is that we cannot open up travel until there are no new variants elsewhere in the world then we will never be able to travel abroad ever again…the… fact that the government needs to state much more clearly is that sadly people will die from Covid here in the UK in the future, as 10,000 to 20,000 people do every year from flu.”
The nation and the travel industry cannot be held to ransom over the issue of new variants. Huw Merriman, a conservative MP, sees our government’s current stand as an over reaction to a policy made when the government was too lax, but the price being paid for this policy is too high for both the travel industry and the economy.
The inbound industry alone is responsible for £28.4 billion to the economy, with tourism the 3rd largest service sector contributor to economic output providing half a million jobs. However 5,000 jobs per month have been lost in the UK travel industry since last March. Given the burden of debt in the industry, and the difficulty of finding staff brought on by Brexit visa rules, affecting both tourism and hospitality, it is anticipated that many businesses will go to the wall in the coming months without further support.
I have seen posts on social media today from travel agents, including from Yorkshire where I live, taking part in today’s action because they have not had any income in the last twelve months. The outbound industry is on its knees, surviving on various schemes such as furlough payments, deferral of taxes and rates, and business grants. The continued barriers to business mean that no income will be coming in any time any time soon, yet the support is about to be reduced and ultimately removed with nothing in its place.
The inbound industry alone is responsible for £28.4 billion to the economy, with tourism the 3rd largest service sector contributor to economic output providing half a million jobs.
It is important to highlight that the sector doesn’t want support. It wants to do business. However if the government continues to put barriers in the way of business, and prevents companies from trading, then compensatory measures should be put in place. Business breaks and subsidies, an extension to the furlough scheme, reductions in the VAT on testing, and a relaxation on visa rules to allow the industry to recruit overseas staff below the £32,000 threshold would all make a huge difference, and that is what I would be asking for if I were in Parliament Square today.
The timing of this Day of Action is crucial as ministers have a deadline of 28th June to review the government’s traffic light system for travel, and the cabinet’s Covid-O committee is due to meet later this week to consider whether or not to expand its quarantine-free green list. Although I cannot be in London today, with the publication of this letter, I am joining Theresa May, Huw Merriman and others in asking the government to open up travel to and from low risk countries, to capitalise on the vaccination success with fewer restrictions, and to be open and transparent in their decision making, particularly on the traffic light system, so that the public, and the travel industry has clarity on how to determine safe options for travel and we can all move forward.
As my MP, I ask you to push for and support any measures which will assist the travel industry, both incoming and outbound, whether that is on transparency, expanding the green list and removing unnecessary quarantine, and, in the absence of these measures, to ensure that adequate financial support and compensation, as outlined above, is forthcoming.
Your sincerely,
Robert Dee, Boston Spa, Wetherby
New Deal Europe is the only travel market platform dedicated to generating business to Balkan region of Europe, www.newdealeurope.com. Follow us on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/newdealeurope.
