Why ministers are worried about foreign holidays this summer

On 5 April, the government will publish its framework for deciding what foreign travel will be allowed this summer. As I say in the Times today, there is very little optimism in Whitehall about European holidays this summer. This might seem odd given that every adult will have been offered at least their first dose by then. Surely the vaccine should allow us to go abroad even to places where there is Covid in circulation? But not if the worry is about a vaccine-evading variant being imported into the country. As one of those involved in devising the way out of lockdown puts it: 

‘Variants of concern are the one big threat to the whole programme. If you get a vaccine resistant strain, then we are up the creek.’

The nightmare scenario is that all the restrictions are removed and then a vaccine-evading variant emerges and rips through the population. And then we have to start again, albeit with much greater testing capacity and better treatments. Matt Hancock is particularly worried about this possibility, which is one of the reasons why he, Priti Patel and Michael Gove are so reluctant to relax travel restrictions.

Interestingly, when Hancock has tried to persuade colleagues of the merits of this approach he has argued that tough rules on travel would mean softer rules at home. ‘The question is are we prepared to give up foreign holidays to secure domestic freedom,’ is how one colleague sums up his view. The idea of a trade-off has, at its premise, the risk of the emergence of vaccine-escaping variants.

The framework set out by this review won’t ban all foreign holidays. Boris Johnson is reluctant to curtail liberty to that extent, and he has sympathy for those who want some guaranteed sunshine after the past 12 months. There’s also a recognition that for many people foreign travel is about meeting family (one in four British children are born to a foreign-born mother). But travel will likely be confined to those countries with very low levels of Covid. If, for instance, you are planning to go to vaccinated Israel this summer, you are likely to get the green light.