Government's quarantine system is not 'chaotic', transport secretary says

Transport secretary held out hope that Spanish islands might eventually get no-quarantine status

Quarantine alert: the arrivals area at Heathrow Terminal 5 (Simon Calder)

The transport secretary has rejected criticism of the government’s quarantine policy, saying the UK does not have access to sufficient data to enable differentiation between regions within the same country.

Grant Shapps held out some hope that Spanish islands might eventually be granted no-quarantine status. But he reiterated his warning to all prospective travellers that they could be obliged to self-isolate for two weeks on their return.

Mr Shapps was speaking on the BBC Today programme after giving British travellers in the Czech Republic, Jamaica and Switzerland until 4am on Saturday to return to the UK, or face 14 days stuck at home.

On Thursday, the chief executive of Manchester Airports Group, Charlie Cornish, condemned the government’s quarantine strategy as “sluggish, illogical and chaotic,” saying “It is evident in the tens of thousands of job losses that have already been announced and the millions of holidays already cancelled.”

But the transport secretary said: “It is very, very difficult living alongside this virus.

“If I tell you that in a week the figures on Jamaica changed from being pretty low and stable [to] 382 per cent increase you’ll understand that this wasn’t one that anyone predicted this time last week.

“You have to act once these things happen because we’ve worked very hard to get to a situation of having reasonably low levels at home, about 11 cases per 100,000 over seven days, and we’ve got a protect that.

“I think most people this summer will have known, and certainly this autumn, that for when you go away, as I discovered myself, you have to go away with your eyes open.”

Mr Shapps travelled to Spain on holiday the day before he himself put the country on the no-go list, and was obliged to self-isolate for two weeks when he came back to the UK.

“No one is more accustomed to this than me because I turned up in Spain, changed the rules and had to return,’ he said. “So I totally get the level of inconvenience.”

He rejected the notion of a more closely focused “no-go” strategy, saying: “We don’t have access in foreign countries to that sort of granular data to say, ‘Ah, well in this particular area …’.”

But the transport secretary once again hinted that islands might be treated differently if infection rates were shown to be significantly lower than for the mainland.

“I do accept that actually islands are potentially an area where you can distinguish,” he said. “But even there we’re having to work very carefully and closely with the authorities on the ground to check that the data is accurate.”

In a blistering attack on the Department for Transport, Mr Cornish said: “Throughout the pandemic there has been no evidence of any recognition from the government of the need to protect the travel industry and enable it to recover from what is undoubtedly the biggest crisis it has ever faced.

“We see no signs that it wants to avoid further jobs losses, or an appreciation of the critical role airports will have in the economic revival of regions across the country as we gingerly emerge from this crippling pandemic.”

Mr Shapps said: “The first priority has to be protecting the UK population. We cannot see this return by reimporting it, by people coming home from a break and bringing it back with them.

“We’re seeing too much of that, and we will always clamp down on it, I’m afraid.”