The Transport Secretary has acknowledged that varying advice for quarantining when arriving in different UK nations from abroad “creates confusion”, amid holidaymakers’ calls for clarity.
Grant Shapps defended the UK Government’s decision not to impose restrictions on people entering England from Greece and Portugal despite the Scotland and Wales ordering periods of isolation to slow the spread of coronavirus.
He said quarantine powers laid with the devolved administrations and added that Westminster decided not to impose the measure on the popular holiday destinations because figures suggested cases were falling.
Scotland and Wales are imposing 14 days of isolation on arrivals from Portugal. Scotland is also including Greece on its quarantine list, while Wales added seven Greek islands.
Devolved
Mr Shapps told Sky News: “I do realise it creates confusion for people not to have a single rule, but we do have this devolved approach throughout the United Kingdom and I can only be responsible for the English part of that.”
He said the Government’s review concluded no changes were necessary partly because test positivity in Portugal came down while the number of cases overall in Greece had fallen.
The Cabinet minister said testing at airports is not a “silver bullet solution” to end quarantining and the “vast majority” of asymptomatic cases would not be detected by one test alone.
There had been speculation that Westminster would reimpose the requirement on Portugal due to a spike in Covid-19 cases, leading many holidaymakers to pay hundreds of pounds to fly home this week.
In Wales, the need to isolate for 14 days when arriving from Portugal, Gibraltar and seven Greek islands came into force at 4am on Friday.
In Scotland, passengers arriving from Portugal will have to quarantine from 4am on Saturday, as well as those arriving from French Polynesia.
Scotland began requiring travellers from anywhere in Greece to enter quarantine from Thursday.
There were 23 Covid-19 cases per 100,000 people in Portugal in the seven days to Wednesday, up from 15.3 a week earlier.
A seven-day rate of 20 is the threshold above which the UK Government has considered triggering quarantine conditions.
Industry leaders and holidaymakers criticised the Government, saying travellers are “totally confused” by the different approaches in Westminster and the devolved administrations.
Kelly Jones and her family changed their flights home from the Algarve from Saturday to Friday at a cost of £900 to avoid a potential quarantine, because she did not want her children to miss two weeks of school.
The 45-year-old from Birmingham said the situation was “absolutely disgusting”, telling the PA news agency: “The Government just change the goalposts left, right and centre at the moment. It’s embarrassing.”
In tatters
Paul Charles, chief executive of travel consultancy the PC Agency, said: “The quarantine policy is in tatters and dividing the United Kingdom.
“Consumers are totally confused by the different approaches and it’s impossible to understand the Government’s own criteria any more on when to add or remove a country.”
It came as figures showed the number of close contacts of people who tested positive for Covid-19 being reached through Test and Trace was at its lowest since the system was launched.
Thursday also saw the highest daily total of virus cases since June 4, with 1,735 positive results in the 24 hours to 9am.
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