International Travel

Laurence Robertson Excerpts

Tuesday 29th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Grant Shapps]

On the contrary, I have been listening carefully to what the hon. Member for Oldham West has had to say from the Front Bench. A few days ago, he was challenged about how many countries should go on to the green list and he said, “Well, from our point of view it has got to be about the science.” He said that he cannot give an exact number and that we have to take the expert advice—what on earth does he think we have been doing all these months?

[Mr Laurence Robertson (Tewkesbury) (Con)]

My constituency has a lot of aerospace manufacturing, which is suffering the knock-back from the lack of international travel. At a recent meeting with pilots from my constituency, I was told that the additions to the green list will up their business to only 10% of their capacity, so they really are struggling. They asked whether we could avoid any last-minute changes to policy and give people as much notice as possible. I need to stress that they were asking for a date on which double-vaccinated people would be able to travel a lot more freely. I said I would pass those messages on, which I have done.

[Grant Shapps]

I am grateful for the direct message. Sadly, the pandemic and the virus do not give us much advance notice; we often find that a country is on the green list and we need to move it, as we saw with Portugal and Spain with the travel corridors last year. One thing that we have done to provide a little more forward guidance is use the green watch list, the purpose of which is to help my hon. Friend’s constituents to see when a country may be a bit closer to the amber border and when they would therefore want to be more aware. I hope that that provides a bit of additional guidance, but I will return to the House next month with more details of what double vaccination can mean for people and for the travel industry.