Recommendation 12

The NAO found that making changes at short notice in the fast-moving environment of the pandemic was inevitable, but the processes for communicating these changes to those responsible for implementing them, in advance of a public announcement, were not timely. Border Force officials, bodies representing carriers and regulators told the NAO that government often announced its decisions about changing travel measures late on a Friday for implementation by Monday, giving them little time to prepare or brief front- line staff responsible for implementing those measures. In some instances, they said they received no official notice ahead of public statements, despite details sometimes appearing in the media or on Twitter.20 We asked DfT whether it had given carriers enough notice of controls being introduced. DfT said that it recognised the operational challenges of giving carriers limited notice but said it had made announcements of changes to the traffic light system more regularly than changes to the previous travel corridor system, and typically sought to provide information about changes to the traffic light system six days in advance based on a regular three-week cycle of announcements.21 Departments told the NAO that they tried to provide more notice wherever possible while avoiding information leaking, which they considered would have had a negative public health impact. DfT acknowledged that it did not provide long-term transparency over why countries moved between the red, amber and green lists, which carriers needed to run their operations.22