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On Monday Matt Hancock, the health secretary, tried to justify the decision not to put India on the red list earlier by quoting figures implying that in early April the situation there was not as bad as in Pakistan and Bangladesh, which were added to the red list on 2 April. But, as reported in the blog yesterday, Sky’s Ed Conway found government figures about the Covid positivity rates for people arriving in the UK from those countries that contradicted what Hancock told MPs.
Downing Street was unable to defend Hancock’s claims yesterday. We asked the Department of Health, and after 7pm last night they finally sent out a response that failed to explain the discrepancy. Conway posted it on Twitter, alongside the questions he put to the department.
Normally I’d just post the govt statement but in this case, in the interests of transparency, I’ll also post my questions verbatim. So you can judge for yourself how satisfactorily they were answered. pic.twitter.com/p3XKXUnGVq
ABTA, the trade body representing the travel industry, has criticised the government for trying to stop people travelling on holiday to countries on the amber list. In a statement issued this morning it said:
It doesn’t make sense for the government to tell people they shouldn’t travel to amber destinations when the government itself has put a plan in place that allows them to do this in a risk managed way, with mitigations such as testing and quarantine. The recent comments and mixed messages from ministers undermine the government’s own system for international travel and further erode consumer confidence.
While we understand that public health is the priority, the government has moved the goalposts on the return to international travel. In April it laid out a sensible plan to enable people to travel overseas, with a traffic light system of measures and mitigations to help prevent the reimportation of the virus on the return home. This is supported by the Foreign Office advice which manages the risk to people in destination. International travel is now legal again and the traffic light system needs to be allowed to work as originally intended.
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