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Select Committee · Public Accounts Committee

Managing cross-border travel during the COVID-19 pandemic

Status: Closed Opened: 25 Apr 2022 Closed: 14 Oct 2022 10 recommendations 20 conclusions 1 report

Putting cross-border travel measures in place during the COVID-19 pandemic often at speed to time-pressured deadlines then adapting and sustaining them required considerable efforts by government and others. Although individual departments have been monitoring their own spending on implementing cross-border travel measures in response to COVID-19, the National Audit Office (NAO) has found that Government …

Clear

Reports

1 report
Title HC No. Published Items Response
Sixteenth Report - Managing cross-border travel during the … HC 29 26 Jul 2022 30 Responded

Recommendations & Conclusions

3 items
1 Conclusion Sixteenth Report - Managing cross-borde… Acknowledged

On the basis of a report by the Comptroller and Auditor General, we took evidence...

On the basis of a report by the Comptroller and Auditor General, we took evidence from the Cabinet Office, the Home Office, the Department for Transport (DfT), and the Department of Health & Social Care (DHSC), about the latest phase of government’s cross-border travel measures.1

Government response. The government acknowledges the report and provides administrative details about the evidence taken and publication date.
HM Treasury
13 Conclusion Sixteenth Report - Managing cross-borde… Acknowledged

We asked the Department about the support it had provided the aviation industry during the...

We asked the Department about the support it had provided the aviation industry during the pandemic. DfT told us that government had provided up to £8 billion of support to the aviation industry during the pandemic, but recognised that this was mostly the take-up of general support, from the furlough …

Government response. The government references its response to the Transport Select Committee, stating that the default approach will be to use the least stringent measures to minimize the impact on travel as far as possible when responding to COVID-19 variants.
HM Treasury
29 Conclusion Sixteenth Report - Managing cross-borde… Acknowledged

We found in our report on Government preparedness for the COVID-19 pandemic: lessons for government...

We found in our report on Government preparedness for the COVID-19 pandemic: lessons for government on risk that government would have been better prepared for COVID-19 if it had applied learning from previous incidents and exercises.52 The NAO reported that, following the removal of travel restrictions in March 2022, government …

Government response. The government agrees with the committee and states that lessons learned continue to inform contingency planning across government, including for future public health threats. They retained COVID-19 surveillance and set out an overarching contingency strategy based on pharmaceutical interventions.
HM Treasury

Oral evidence sessions

1 session
Date Witnesses
23 May 2022 Alex Chisholm · Cabinet Office, Gareth Davies · Department for Transport, Patricia Hayes · Home Office, Phil Douglas · Border Force, Shona Dunn · Home Office View ↗

Correspondence

2 letters
DateDirectionTitle
5 Jul 2022 — Correspondence from Dame Meg Hillier, Chair, Committee of Public Accounts to Pa…
14 Jun 2022 — Correspondence from Gareth Davies CB, Second Permanent Secretary, Department fo…