Recommendation 35

HM Government Not Addressed

Replied together with 37. The Government should publish these prevalence rates now and explain why Spain was included on the travel corridors list. (Paragraph 194) And with 48. Effective quarantine arrangements require high levels of voluntary compliance, even more so when enforcement is limited. The suddenness and lack of transparency behind the decisions about Spain may have consequences for enforcement if travellers remain sceptical about the policy or face financial pressures as a result of not being able to return to work as planned. It is important for Government to build confidence in the decisions it has taken and the justification for them, and also to make sure that people can afford to comply. (Paragraph 224) The Government agrees with the Committee that due to the continued risk from COVID-19, swift action needs to be taken. The Government has been clear since it introduced international travel corridors on 10 July that it will act quickly to remove a country or territory from the exemption for self-isolation requirement for arrivals if required to do so by a changing health situation. On 26 July Spain was removed from the travel corridor and this means that people coming to the UK from Spain, or its territories such as the Balearic and Canary Islands, will need to self-isolate for 14 days. The FCO has also advised against all but essential travel to Spain. The Government recognises that the decision to remove Spain from the Travel Corridor list was unwelcome news for travel operators, holiday makers and business travellers. However, it is vitally important that we continue to take swift action (as suggested by the Committee in the report) to manage the risk from coronavirus and keep the number of cases of COVID-19 in the UK as low as possible. The Government took action after the Spanish Health Ministry published data on Friday 24 July, which was subsequently reported on by the European Centre for Disease Control. Over 2,000 new COVID-19 cases were reported in Spain, and new cases reported across the Thursday and Friday were 75 per cent higher than those reported on the previous two days. This rate of increase, together with the high seven-day case rate for Spain and the picture of increasing cases across most regions of Spain, represented a significant, and unexpected, change in the health situation. In response to this new information, Public Health England and the Joint Biosecurity Centre (JBC) undertook an urgent review, and updated Ministers at a meeting on the Saturday afternoon. Ministers agreed that urgent action was needed to protect the health of the UK public from the risk of imported infections from travellers arriving into the UK from Spain. We advised British nationals currently in Spain that they may continue with their trip and should continue to adhere to the rules and advice of local authorities including on social distancing and practising good hygiene. Passengers were advised they would need to fill in the passenger locator form before arriving back in the UK and must then self-isolate for 14 days. Currently, the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office is advising against all but essential travel to Spain and its territories. We are working closely with airlines and airports to ensure they are communicating with affected passengers–those currently in Spain and those who plan to travel there in the future. COVID-19 has changed the nature of international travel. Travellers should carefully check the latest UK Government travel advice (www.gov.uk/foreign-travel-advice) before making plans and commencing their journeys, and should purchase travel insurance. Further information can be found at www.gov.uk/guidance/coronavirus-covid-19-travel-corridors. Spain is an important friend and partner which has welcomed British tourists over many years. We want to see a return to normal international travel with Spain, but this can only happen where we are certain that that travel is safe and the risks of importing infections are minimised. We will therefore continue to keep the conditions in Spain and its territories under review. The Government has been clear that we will act quickly to remove a country or territory from the exemption if required to do so by a changing health situation–as supported by the Committee. The Government has also made clear that where there is a sustained improvement in a country’s health situation, we will reinstate exemptions or add new ones–just as we have done for many countries including Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia, Italy and more recently some Greek islands. The Joint Biosecurity Centre, working closely with PHE, provides an assessment of the risks to UK public health from inbound international travel. This informs ministerial decisions on which countries they should exempt from self-isolation measures through travel corridors. The methodology takes into account a combination of quantitative and qualitative factors, relative to the UK. This include