Shapps chairs first meeting of new travel taskforce

The taskforce will report to government by 12 April on a plan for restarting international travel in a safe and sustainable way no earlier than 17 May.

Its work, the DfT said, will involve developing a new risk-based framework to facilitate international travel while managing the risk of importing new cases and "variants of concern".

This will utilise the government’s existing border measures, such as testing and self-isolation, and will build on recommendations from the taskforce’s November report.

The taskforce’s efforts will "take place in parallel and be closely integrated" with a review of "Covid-status certification" being led by chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, Michael Gove.

The DfT said a decision on when international travel can resume would depend on four factors: the domestic and global epidemiological situation; the emergence, location and prevalence of variants of concern; the progress of the UK’s vaccine roll-out and programmes overseas; and new data on the efficacy of the vaccines currently being deployed on variants, transmission, hospitalisation and death.

‘Wave of optimism’

"The UK’s leading vaccine roll-out has created a wave of optimism and, as a result, the Global Travel Taskforce is charged with exploring safe and secure ways to restart international travel when the time is right," said Shapps.

"By planning carefully considered steps, we will protect the excellent progress made through our vaccine and advanced testing programme, while ensuring we are ready to kick-start our travel sector when current travel restrictions can be lifted.

"We will not only consider the progress of our world-beating domestic vaccine programme but also need to review where destination countries have got to with both vaccine and testing capabilities."