The All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on coronavirus has told the government to “discourage all international leisure travel” due to their fear of ‘variant Covid strains’.
Lib Dem MP Layla Moran, chair of the group, said: “We wouldn’t want to have for the sake of one summer holiday us go backwards and have a further wave and a further lockdown.”
She warned that allowing international travel again could “scupper our progress at the very last minute”.
“The government should be the ones telling people maybe not this year, just wait a few more precious months and then when we’ve got enough people vaccinated, not just here but around the world, we will get back to normal.
“It just might not be this summer.”
The group said it had identified a number of issues that the resumption of international travel would raise, including airport arrival halls being a “breeding ground for infection” and the importation of variants which could lead to “further lockdowns and inevitably further loss of life”.
It recommended that passengers returning from green, amber, and red countries under the new risk-based system should not be able to mix.
Their documents should be checked before they enter an arrival hall so those being taken to quarantine facilities can be moved “rapidly”.
Paul Charles, chief executive of travel consultancy The PC Agency, claimed the “best financial support the government can now offer the travel sector is to open up overseas travel as planned from 17 May”.
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