[Relevant documents: Fifth Report of the Transport Committee of Session 2019-21, The impact of the coronavirus pandemic on the aviation sector: Interim report, HC 1257, and the Government response, HC 28; Summary of public engagement on covid-19 restrictions on international travel, reported to the House on 20 May, HC 243; Seventh Report of the Transport Committee of Session 2019-21, Safe return of international travel?, HC 1341.]
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That this House has considered e-petition 565102, relating to international travel and covid-19.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Fovargue. Another petition and another covid story that is either desperately sad or frustrating on an emotional and economic level—sometimes both. Governing is always challenging, but since March last year the Government have had to make a series of exceptionally difficult decisions. One issue that has been a source of continuing controversy is travel—who should be able to do it and for what reasons, where they should be permitted to go, and the conditions that should apply on their re-entry. Of course, when deciding those restrictions protecting public safety is paramount, but I know that Ministers have had to make those decisions while balancing a number of competing demands.
The debate concerns two of those competing demands, which affect both the personal and professional lives of people in my constituency and across the country. First is the effect of travel restrictions on people in long-distance relationships. The second is the financial hardship that the travel industry has suffered. Let me speak on the travel restrictions first. While most people who do not live with their partner have spent the last year worrying about bubbles and outdoor walks, those whose partners live abroad have dealt with concerns that are on another scale.
People in long-distance relationships are used to spending time apart, but 14 months is quite a long time. For a substantial period of that, travel has been illegal to all intents and purposes. Even when it has technically been allowed, the cost of testing and quarantining has made travel prohibitively expensive. I recently spoke with a young woman named Katie, who started the petition. Her partner David lives in Germany and they have known each other for four years. Before the pandemic, they used to visit each another regularly. Those trips would cost on average around £200. Now that Germany is on the amber list, the same trip would cost her £600, not including any income that she may lose while isolating. If Germany were on the red list, it would cost £2,400. As a result, Katie and David have seen each other only three times in the last 18 months.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Fovargue, and to follow the excellent speech by the hon. Member for Don Valley (Nick Fletcher). I thank all those who have signed the petition, including 300 of my own constituents. Many of them have heartrending stories of separation from family or other loved ones or of missing deathbed visits, weddings, funerals and baptisms. For some, this separation, with all its consequences for mental health, goes back well over a year, particularly if they were not lucky enough to be able to make use of the limited travel allowed to some countries by last year’s travel corridors.
Tonight’s debate is a useful corrective to the recent media coverage of travel, which has tended to focus on holidays. We should not have a problem with people taking safe holidays—I certainly do not—but this is also about the millions of people in Britain who have family or loved ones in another country, who have been unable to see them and who are longing to do so. More than one third of children born in the United Kingdom have at least one parent who was not born here. That illustrates the scale of the separation that many of our constituents are experiencing.
Outward travel from Britain in a normal year generates £37 billion for our economy and sustains 526,000 jobs. Inward travel generates £28 billion and sustains 450,000 jobs. That does not include the value of business and professional travel, which is estimated by the Business Travel Association to be even greater. Nobody—at least almost nobody—has been arguing that we should not have any restrictions on travel at all. Every other country that is similar to the United Kingdom in its economy and the impact of covid has had foreign travel restrictions, but my concern is that the Government, having perhaps not been cautious enough on travel earlier in the pandemic, are now being over-cautious, as we come out of it, given the evidence and the data, and especially given the success and advanced state of our vaccination programme.
Thank you for calling me, Ms Fovargue. It is a pleasure to speak in this important debate, and I thank the more than 100,000 petitioners who have made their voices heard. I particularly welcome the case for families seeing their partners, where they are not married, and their friends and loved ones generally. For far too long we have been told that people should not be able to go on holiday. I profoundly disagree and, like the right hon. Member for Exeter (Mr Bradshaw), believe people should be entitled to go on holiday.
What has become of our country that we seek to demonise those who wish to go on holiday? For a lot of people, this is about a trip abroad to see their loved ones and those they are in a relationship with, whom they have not seen for over a year in certain circumstances. To me, that demonstrates a need for compassion so as to allow those individuals to get back to see their families, friends and loved ones. I absolutely get behind the e-petitioners; they have my full support to ensure that not just they, but others who have legitimate reasons to do so, are able to travel abroad. I believe that is now safe and proportionate.
I am grateful to the e-petitioners because the Transport Committee has been able to tag on to this debate the two reports in which we made our recommendations to Government. In the first report, dated 9 March this year, we pushed for the Government to ensure that the global travel taskforce recommendations were published by 12 April to unlock international travel by 17 May. We were glad that the Government largely met those dates.
Perhaps the more relevant report in terms of time is that of 20 April this year, in which the Committee made a number of recommendations, which are worth highlighting. The first was that the traffic light system should be populated by 1 May to give industry and travellers sufficient time to navigate the rules and comply with them. The second was that the criteria for changing the traffic lights should be set out in full by 1 May. The third was that testing requirements should be proportionate to the risk set out with respect to those traffic lights.
6:40 pm
Mr Virendra Sharma (Ealing, Southall) (Lab) [V]
It is a great pleasure to speak under your leadership, Ms Fovargue. I thank all the people who signed the petition.
I want to speak briefly on two important points. First, my constituents rely on Heathrow airport for jobs and the energy that it brings to the local economy, as do many people in the areas around my constituency. The past 15 months have been extremely difficult for them, and the recovery needs to be meaningful and consistent to save businesses and livelihoods. Local employers need the certainty that a safe return to international travel brings, and they need Government support for investment.
A dedicated red list arrivals facility will make travelling safer and increase confidence that the UK’s only hub airport is supported as a safe travel route. Government commitments to make that logistically and financially viable are needed, and an answer sooner rather than later would ensure that safe travel for millions of people this summer was possible. I have raised in the House the need for Border Force properly to staff entry points, and we can rebuild trust and keep people safe by employing sufficient staff. Infrastructure on the ground should not be a second thought; it needs to be central to our planning.
My second point is about where we support recovery. I want investment in recovery to be made in places that embody our values. We should not be supporting a return to normal, but building back better. Eco-tourism is not exclusively branding; it supports the communities where it takes place. It is not just the preserve of the wealthy; it can save environments, communities and species from extinction.
In supporting protection efforts around the world, good eco-tourism is about preservation and conservation. It is also about animal welfare, and I am proud to have been a parliamentary supporter of Save The Asian Elephants for many years. Its work has done more than any other to shine a light on unethical tourism, and the organisation’s latest petition reached over 1 million signatures last week. I urge all hon. Members present to sign it. Unfortunately, despite our work with STAE, we have not yet been successful in convincing ABTA—The Travel Association—to dissociate itself totally from cruel and unethical elephant venues. I hope that when we think about the steps that we are taking to enable holidays and to open up international travel, we put our morals and beliefs at the heart of any strategy.
It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Ms Fovargue, and I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley (Nick Fletcher) on securing this important debate.
I very much agree with many of the observations that have been made by hon. Members from different parties. There is an important message that the Government have to grasp and be honest with the public about: if there is a point in the vaccination programme, it is to save lives and to enable a safe return to normality as swiftly as possible. International travel is a part of normality, be it for family reunions, as has been eloquently said—many of us will know it from our constituencies—for tourism or, importantly in constituencies such as mine with a big financial services sector, for business. Nor should we forget cultural and educational exchanges. We must have investment and a clear strategy for getting back safely to that normality. I am grateful to the 220-plus constituents of mine in Bromley and Chislehurst who for a number of reasons signed the petition.
I appreciate the point made by the Chairman of the Select Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Bexhill and Battle (Huw Merriman). First, we must say that we do not demonise those who seek to go on holiday; secondly, we must give real recognition to the value of the sector to the economy; and thirdly, we must be prepared to invest in technology. I am glad he picked up on the point about the investment in Border Force and the border.
A constituent of mine who works in the travel sector was made redundant and has now set up a small business herself. She is one of the more than 60% of people working for travel management companies who have been made redundant since the pandemic. In her endeavour to get back on her feet, she points out the very good work being done in technology—artificial design intelligence, for example—by organisations such as VeriFLY seamless travel. The technologies that they have come up with are used in the United States already. They already work with US airlines and have technologies in operation at Denver International airport. They have pilot schemes and have discussed trial schemes with British Airways. We need to get behind and encourage that.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Fovargue. I congratulate the hon. Member for Don Valley (Nick Fletcher) on securing this important and timely debate.
I will stick to my five minutes by merely supporting what hon. Members have said already, in particular what was said by the right hon. Member for Exeter (Mr Bradshaw) and by the Chair of the Transport Committee, the hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle (Huw Merriman). I support many of their points.
There is no doubt that the Government have lots of difficult decisions to make about how we reopen our travel sector as we come out of the pandemic, which we all hope we are now doing thanks to the huge success of the vaccine roll-out. Many of my constituents are employed in or own businesses across the travel and tourism sectors. I hear from them huge frustration at the lack of clarity surrounding the overall strategy for allowing international travel and reopening the sector. Above all, we need a great deal more clarity on how decisions are being made, in particular with reference to which countries are on the green, amber and red lists.
I share the dismay of the Chair of the Transport Committee at the small number of countries that are on the green list; not knowing the criteria for the lists is causing a great deal of confusion. In recent weeks, we have heard a great deal about India, for example, not being on the red list despite its circumstances being more severe than those in other countries that were on the red list. It is important that we have clarity about why countries are on the red or amber lists.
What is most important for the travel industry is being able to plan and to predict, and to look at conditions prevailing in certain countries and think, “Are they on the way out? Have they got a vaccine programme that they are rolling out? What is the likelihood that we will be able to travel freely to that country in July, August or September?” If we had more clarity about why decisions are being made and when we might be allowed to travel to certain countries freely again, that would make a huge difference.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Fovargue, in this important Westminster Hall debate this evening. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley (Nick Fletcher) for securing it.
Like other hon. Members, I have recently heard from many constituents on international travel and covid-19 restrictions. With over 1,200 signatories to the petition from within Cities of London and Westminster—my constituency—it is clearly a subject that is close to the hearts of my constituents, and one that should be reviewed in the light of new data. No doubt, we are now in a very different position from the one we were dealing with last year. We now have the tools to facilitate both travel and health, with advancements in testing, as well as the exceptional vaccine roll-out that was quite simply not available 12 months ago. Indeed, so much has changed even since the Government’s response to the petition was published last month, with new data suggesting that the vaccines are effective and working well against the new Indian variant.
I support the Government’s road map, and accept the traffic light system for non-essential international travel. However, when it comes to small-scale, case-by-case travel for the sake of a family unit or critical support network, I believe that there are circumstances in which we could be more pragmatic and reasonable to ensure that people are not penalised for something that could dramatically affect their quality of life. I can see how devastating family separation has been for them. People are finding themselves in hugely emotional situations, and as people get vaccinated and infections fall, one of the things that they want to do first is reconnect with their loved ones, particularly those abroad. After all, love is not tourism.
It is important to note that the issue my constituents are facing is not necessarily the ability to travel abroad. Instead, issues occur when returning to the UK. I do not have time this evening to expound all the cases that constituents have raised with me, but for example, a number of parents have been unable to afford to, or practically be able to, visit their children who are living with a partner overseas, particularly in amber-rated countries. Making parents with custody agreements exempt from hotel quarantine, for example, providing they are vaccinated or comply with testing on their return, would make a small dent in our current guidelines, but have a major impact on people’s lives across my constituency and across the UK.
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According to a survey conducted by the group Love is Not Tourism, the impact of extended separation on people in long-distance relationships has been significant. Of 400 people in binational relationships questioned for the survey, many had felt depressed and hopeless and said that they were finding it difficult to do their work or take care of things at home. Sadly, Love is Not Tourism has said that 18 people in long-distance relationships have lost their partners to suicide. While suicide is a complex issue and does not have one single cause, it is impossible to deny that the distress caused by extended separation must have played a part.
In a survey run by the Petitions Committee of those who signed the petition, one respondent said:
“I have been separated from my partner for over a year…The stress, sadness and wait alone (literally alone) for any news the travel restrictions to the US will be lifted is horrendous. He cannot come here (to the UK) because of work commitments, only I am in the position to travel to him.”
That comment is typical of those who submitted feedback. While this issue primarily affects partners, parents and children who live in different countries have also been significantly impacted. Travel restrictions have meant that some people with young children have not been able to see them in many months.
I know the Government will have looked at the data on the risk of infection when setting out valid reasons for travel during the last lockdown, but it strikes some people as unfair that one can travel abroad for a business meeting, but seeing one’s partner or parent is treated the same as a holiday. This was a common theme in the feedback the Committee received, with one respondent writing:
“My father splits his time between the UK and Argentina. His wife is Argentine and has children resident in Argentina. Dad has myself, my sister and three grandchildren who are all desperate to see him. I haven’t seen Dad since 13 March 2020. I understand why restrictions had to be put in place, I’ve followed every rule. Dad doesn’t want a holiday—just contact with his family.”
Since last August, the German Government have allowed non-EU, unmarried partners into the country, provided they can demonstrate they are in long-term relationships and have met in person before. Those are reasonable requirements that the vast majority of those in long-distance relationships would be able to meet. If we had had something similar during this past year, it might have saved many people quite a lot of heartache and stress. Unfortunately, now that Germany has declared the UK an area of virus variant concern, people such as Katie and David will face even more challenges to seeing one another.
I understand that travel restrictions have been necessary over the past year. In the middle of our loosening restrictions, the appearance of the Indian variant has not helped the petitioners’ argument. However, I urge the Government to consider making allowance for people to visit their partners along the lines of Germany if we are ever to be in this position again—let us all truly hope not.
Turning to the professional side of the debate, travel restrictions have clearly had a severe impact on all parts of the travel industry. This covers a range of businesses from hotels to airlines, including my very own Doncaster Sheffield Airport, but today I would like to discuss travel agents who, I believe, have been disproportionately impacted, even among those in the travel sector, simply because of the structure of their businesses.
Since the pandemic began, travel bookings have been down 80%. In March, 57% of small and medium-sized travel agents said they did not have enough cash to survive more than six months given current restrictions, and 87% thought they would fail within a year. Last week, I had the opportunity to speak with Luke Petherbridge of the Association of British Travel Agents. He stressed that, in addition to suffering all the same pressures as the rest of the travel industry, travel agents have been in a particularly precarious position because they do not receive their commission until their customers actually travel. When customers cancel, travel agents have had to issue refunds out of their own account, while waiting for suppliers to refund them. ABTA estimates that 195,000 people working in travel agencies have already lost their jobs or are at risk of doing so.
Travel agents have not been able to take full advantage of the furlough scheme, either, because staff have been required to issue refunds and manage rebookings, activities that do not bring in any revenue but prevent companies from using the job retention scheme. I know this from speaking to two private travel agents in my constituency. Ideal Travel and Small World Travel have worked desperately hard to keep their customers happy. I hope this will be repaid locally when my constituents are booking their holidays over the coming years.
Frequent changes in travel advice, although many will agree necessary, will prevent travel agents making long-term plans. ABTA members are also concerned that what Government support they can access will be wound down too quickly because of the amount of time it will take for their industry to return to normal operations.
The Government could take a range of measures to help travel agents and I ask the Minister to consider them. Extending the self-employment income support scheme, along with full business rates relief for businesses operating in international travel, would make a notable difference. The wider use of NHS covid tests and lateral flow tests can help both those travelling to visit their loved ones and travel agents, whose livelihoods depend on tourism. The requirement for multiple PCR tests was heavily criticised by petitioners, who believe that it is disproportionate and exploitative. One survey respondent wrote:
“I think it is excessively expensive. Seeing your family shouldn’t be a luxury”.
People also do not understand why the NHS test is not accepted for travel, with people instead having to pay hundreds of pounds for private PCR tests. Another petitioner said:
“Flights don’t allow NHS tests to be used as pre departure tests, which seems odd, surely the tests provided by our national health service should be sufficient”.
Therefore, my ask of the Minister here today is to work with colleagues in Government to see whether it will be possible to allow people to use NHS and lateral flow tests, as that would remove a significant financial burden from travellers visiting loved ones and be a more realistic possibility in helping the travel sector to recover more quickly. My ask of the petitioners and the good people of this country is to please continue to come forward for your vaccination and, although it is hard, just for a little longer bear with the restrictions. That really is the only way to get us and the rest of the world back to some kind of normality.
Look at what other countries are now doing, Ms Fovargue. Vaccinated Americans are free to travel. Most of our European neighbours are free to travel with either proof of vaccination or a negative antigen test, which is cheaply and widely available, including at most airports. A number of countries, including Greece, Spain, Italy and Portugal—yes, they are popular holiday destinations for British people, but they are also countries with which people living here have many family and other ties—are already welcoming British people with open arms. They are at most requiring proof of vaccination or a negative antigen test, or, in the case of Spain from today, neither, but for most people in Britain, the fact that those other countries are ready to welcome us is meaningless because, with the exception of Portugal, all are on the Government’s orange list, requiring quarantine on return as well as multiple expensive PCR tests.
Back in February, as our vaccination programme was roaring ahead compared with those in the rest of Europe, there was a front-page headline in the German tabloid newspaper Bild Zeitung along the lines of, “The Germans are green with envy because the Brits will get to the sunbeds first this year”. That was a comment on our stellar vaccination programme. It may sound glib for me to press the point, but the Germans and other Europeans are already on the sunbeds in Spain, Greece and Italy. The British, by and large, are not.
We were promised and led to expect a vaccine dividend, but when it comes to foreign travel, we have the opposite. The British are not only under tighter travel restrictions than our European neighbours; we are more restricted than we were last summer, despite having the most-vaccinated population in Europe after Malta.
Some will say in response, and I am sure that the Minister will say later, “Ah, but the variants.” Of course, we must be on guard against new variants, against which the vaccines might not provide such a strong defence. However, we already know—the Government confirmed it this week—that the vaccines are successful against all the known variants. If the post-vaccine reality is that we have to live with the virus, and on that there seems to be a consensus, then, yes, by all means have a red list of countries of concern, but are we really going to keep our borders effectively closed and restrict travel from places that do not pose a risk, with all that entails in prolonged family separation, lost jobs and even greater damage to our economy?
The Government themselves claim to take a risk-based approach, so perhaps the Minister could answer these questions. Why does she believe that Germany, which overall has a very good record in dealing with covid and just as much concern for its citizens as we do, and other comparable countries are allowing their citizens more freedom than we allow ours? Can she explain why the long-awaited green list of countries was so limited, when infection rates in America and across Europe have been falling rapidly and vaccination rates increasing rapidly? Why was Malta, which has a higher vaccination rate and a lower covid rate than the UK, left off the green list? It would be really helpful, to the public and to our long-suffering travel and transport sectors, if the Government published their criteria for deciding whether a country is red, amber or green. The European Union has done that. Why can’t we?
The Government say they still have an islands policy, as they did last year, but that was not apparent when they published their green list, as numerous Greek and Spanish islands, which have lower infection and higher vaccine rates than Portugal, were not on that list. So, will the Minister confirm that we still have an islands policy, and that that will be clear in the next review?
What conversations has the Minister had with her Home Office colleagues about the unacceptably long waits and the mixing of people arriving from different traffic-light countries at Heathrow airport? It is welcome that there is belatedly to be a designated terminal for people arriving from red list countries, but the rest of Europe already operates digitisation for arrivals and that must surely be possible here, especially for people arriving from green list countries.
Will the Minister ensure that the inconsistency between what the Government in Britain say about travelling and what the Foreign Office advice says is addressed? That inconsistency has only added to the confusion for the public and for the travel industry.
When a pre-arrival 20-minute antigen test is enough for Germany and most of our neighbours, why is the UK still insisting, even for green list countries, on an expensive pre-return PCR test, which has to be in English, Spanish or French and so is not available everywhere, and another PCR test after someone has returned?
The sacrifices that people have made over more than a year, along with our very successful vaccination programme, should mean that, as we adapt to living with covid, the UK is in a better place and ahead of other countries as we emerge from this terrible period. However, when it comes to travel, we are not ahead; we are behind our main neighbours and competitors. That is already having consequences in prolonged heartache, and worse, for our constituents who are separated from family and other loved ones, and in the jobs that are lost in our vital travel and transport sectors. Before the pandemic, we were world leaders in those sectors, but “Global Britain”, as the Government like to refer to us, is losing income, business and trade to our competitors in other countries, because those countries have opened up for travel ahead of us.
All I ask is that the Government bear all that in mind, alongside their desire to restrict people’s freedoms to protect public health, when it comes to the important decisions that they have to take on travel in the days and weeks ahead.
The final recommendation was that Border Force resourcing and the sponsorship of digital arrivals should mean that more people could safely come through the airport terminal. I was disappointed when nothing arrived by 1 May, but obviously we did hear something on 7 May. We heard about the criteria, which I welcome, but on those first two I was absolutely underwhelmed by the number of countries on the green list and the sheer number on the amber list. It was incredibly disappointing, for the reasons I will set forth.
I am conscious that I did not check what time I began speaking, Ms Fovargue. The right hon. Member for Exeter had the benefit of a clock, but I do not, so I will give myself two more minutes. I apologise if that makes me overrun.
I was pleased that the Border Force resourcing was stepped up by the Government, and indeed e-gates will come into force as well, so there is some progress there. I make my ultimate plea to the Government: 70% of the UK population have been given a first dose of the vaccination, and 34% are fully vaccinated, which means that 60 million vaccines have been put into arms. It is essential that we get moving and give people back their liberties and freedoms—not just for them as individuals, but so as to employ the 500,000 people in our economy who rely on international travel.
I am not glib about safety, but it has been demonstrated that the vaccine is effective on the latest mutant strain, and if we take the view that we can never unlock because there might be a risk of a mutant strain, we will never be able to fly again. There has to come a point when we look at the proportionality, the health risks involved and the mitigation in place against those health risks, which is testing and quarantine, and we then look at what is good for the economy and for people’s individual freedoms. Otherwise, what is the point of having a successful vaccination programme? Where is the vaccination dividend, and when can we return to a situation whereby people are able to visit their loved ones, friends and families, or indeed take a well-earned holiday? We will then prove to the British people that it was worth it after all.
I apologise profusely if I have gone over time. Had I had the clock, I would have ensured that I did not do so.
We must deal with the variants by being fleet of foot and adapting. If we can do that by investing in technology, and if, as was said, we can invest in better separation of people coming from different classifications of countries at the terminals, that is a safe means of moving things forward. If we are going to live with the virus or its variants for some time, hopefully with diminished toxicity, the investment is a long-term one that should be worth paying for.
May I also point out the importance of in-bound tourism to the UK? It is, as has been observed, worth about £28 billion in earnings. It is the third largest service export sector. There are real difficulties there because of what appear to be confused guidelines, an arbitrary approach, and a lack of transparency and clarity about the traffic light system and the criteria whereby countries that are sometimes—frankly, taking an objective view —better than us in terms of tackling infection are put on the amber list as opposed to the green one. Also, we need to recognise that the infrastructure of the sector needs to be supported. There is the question of continuing business rates support, for example, for those still operating on the high street. I have seen a firm in my constituency, which had been in business for 30 years, go under. That is a lifetime’s work gone.
What can be done to continue furlough and support on a sector-led basis? We need a new sector-specific scheme of recovery grants for travel agents. We need particularly to be able to look at the position of in-bound operators because they bring in, through travel management companies, some 50% of international visitors to the UK. The loss of that income to towns and cities across the United Kingdom has been estimated at up to £18 billion a year. Let us be frank. Although domestic tourism is worthy and certainly to be encouraged, and we all enjoy it, it will not make up the shortfall because the spend per head of domestic visitors is consistently significantly less—some £239 to £696 a head on average—so that will not plug the gap, and firms and businesses and towns, villages and cities dependent on tourism will suffer gravely and needlessly.
Our European neighbours, including Ireland, are being more supportive of the sector through their support regimes than we are at the moment, and they appear to be more fleet of foot as to how they put in place safeguards for the safe reopening of international travel. We need to learn from that. With the huge success of our vaccination programme, we need to be in front of the pack rather than playing catch-up. We need that for the long-term sustainability of a critical sector for our economy.
As the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Sir Robert Neill) said, it is not just about the travel industry. We need clarity in order to provide certainty for many sectors that depend on travel. He highlighted in-bound tourism, which is a big issue for people in my constituency and the wider area. My former employer was Hampton Court Palace, and I know how much it depends on visitors from America and Europe, so it is suffering at the moment. It is about our broader economy, as travellers from our business and cultural sectors want to be able to plan for greater reopening in the autumn. Without much better understanding of how the Government are approaching the opening up, it is very difficult.
I want to highlight the issue with testing when people arrive in the country from an amber list country and need to test on day two and day eight. I was appalled to hear from a constituent about the cost of these tests. I had naively assumed that they would be free, as they are for every resident here who needs a test. I cannot understand why we are charging travellers up to £150 for each test. For a family of four who are travelling here and have to do tests on day two and day eight, that is an extra cost of £600.
This petition is about the needs of those who have family, friends and partners abroad. My heart goes out to people who have dying relatives in other countries, which is a situation in which far too many families find themselves. I have many constituents with family and friends in European countries—we have a lot of European nationals in Richmond Park—who are already finding it difficult to travel to those countries, but need to travel at this time because their families are struggling. To have the additional cost of the tests is inconceivable.
If we have a wider strategy to make international travel possible and safe again, it beggars belief that we are charging that extraordinary amount for those tests. I urge the Government to have another look at that. It is not just a barrier for people who are travelling for whatever reason they want to travel now, but it will continue to be a barrier. If it is going to be part of our strategy for opening up, it will be a barrier to business, trade and tourism, and we must address that. As such, I urge the Government to look at providing greater clarity about how travel can be made possible, and particularly about the cost of tests.
Some of those parents have not seen their children in person for over a year. That is too long to go without a hug from your mum or your dad, and it would be sensible to adopt an approach for people in such circumstances who cannot afford an up-front payment of £1,750 or take 10 days’ annual leave away from work in a quarantine hotel. With this in mind, one option could be to open up the manageable payment plan for people who have a reasonable need to travel, not just those who already receive income-related benefits. To the same end, there could be a new assessment of allowing people to isolate at home, or even finding some exemptions for parents who are unable to see their children under the current guidelines.
We have a world-class vaccine programme, which has now administered over 60 million jabs. I absolutely believe that we need to reap the benefits of the vaccination roll-out with open and sensible policies that strike the right balance between safety and real-life situations. This is not to say that there should be carte blanche, but if there is reasonable cause and proof, I see no reason why people should not be able to travel without being subject to undue stress when returning to the UK. I hope the Minister will accept that although we need to remain vigilant as the pandemic continues, we will be living with covid-19 for some time to come, and we should provide responsible but practical help for those with loved ones abroad.