Grant Shapps confirms fully vaccinated UK residents will not have to isolate returning to England

Grant Shapps confirms fully vaccinated UK residents will not have to isolate returning to England

Passengers push their luggage on arrival in Terminal 5 at Heathrow airport in London.

The UK Transport Secretary detailed his plans to free up foreign holidays as coronavirus restrictions are eased.

Making a statement in the Commons, Mr Shapps confirmed that holidaymakers from the UK who have received two jabs will no longer be required to self-isolate for 10 days on their return to England from destinations on the amber list. Instead, they will have to take a test three days before returning, and then a PCR test on or before day two of being back.

He said: “I can confirm today that from the 19th of July, UK residents who are fully vaccinated through the UK vaccine rollout will no longer have to self-isolate when they return to England.

Transport Secretary Grant Shapps confirmed fully vaccinated UK residents will not have to isolate returning to England

“In essence, this means that for fully vaccinated travellers the requirements for green and amber list countries are the same.”

Labour has previously called for a green and red list, and the removal of the amber list.

Mr Shapps told MPs it was “important” to remember this would not be the case in the devolved administrations, but stressed a willingness to work with them.

He added: “I don’t underestimate for a second just how difficult the last 16 months have been for those who have not been able to travel to see their families, and the tourism and for the aviation sector itself, of course, and no minister, let alone Transport Secretary, would want to ever curtail freedom and ask people not to travel.

“But protecting public health has rightly been and will continue to be our overriding priority of this Government, and that’s why we introduced some of the toughest border measures in the world.

“But we are now, thanks to our brilliant vaccination programme, in a position where we can start to think about how we live with coronavirus while returning life to a sense of normality.”

Joanne Dooey, president of The Scottish Passenger Agents’ Association demanded Scotland follow the same proposals “swiftly”.

She said: “We continue to raise the question of travel certification and how Scotland will deliver a scheme to allow the public to provide proof of vaccination status in order to fly to other countries.

"Currently English travellers can use the NHS app to prove their certification status and this integrates with the EU Digital COVID Certificate (EUDCC) which gives digital proof of a traveller’s vaccination, testing and recovered from COVID-19 status.

“The Scottish Government needs, as a matter of urgency, to tell us what stage, if any, the development of a Scottish app is at. Currently, Scots who wish to travel, have to apply for a paper certificate and we need to be operating at the same level as the other countries which have developed and are already using this technology.

“There is little, if any, customer confidence in travel at the moment and whole sector needs the Scottish Government to get behind a restart to international travel and boost the Scottish economy.”

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