Shapps: 'We don't want to kill off travel sector with pre-arrival tests'
Tom ParryThe transport secretary, who insisted the government does not want to “kill off the travel sector”, has ruled out a return to pre-arrival testing for travellers entering the UK.
Speaking on The Telegraph’s Chopper’s Politics podcast, Grant Shapps also urged families to book overseas holidays, as long as they purchased insurance, and said he believed vaccine passports would become the "norm for travel".
Shapps said he hoped the current policy of no pre-departure testing would not change.
He told the podcast: “Do you want to kill off the travel sector again without knowing that you need to? Or do you want to take the right level of calibrated response?
"This government thinks we should take a calibrated response, which doesn’t take us right back to the beginning of this [pandemic]…
"I believe in transport and I don’t want to see a world where we’re always finding excuses to restrict it. Of course, you’ve got to respond responsibly. That’s what I think we’ve done."
Families, he said, should book overseas holidays as long as their bookings were flexible "and that where you stay respects whatever is happening at the time – go book. But just know that you’ve got the insurance in place".
Shapps also insisted the UK government had not overreacted around the threat of the Omicron variant and had offered a “calibrated” response by placing a number of countries on the red list and requiring face masks in shops and public transport.
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