British green list expansion not enough, say travel bosses
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The government’s expansion of the UK’s green travel list does not go far enough, industry leaders have warned.
Arrivals from 16 places, including Spain’s Balearic Islands, will not have to quarantine from 04:00 on Wednesday.
Transport Secretary Grant Shapps also said the government plans to drop quarantine for fully vaccinated people returning from amber list countries “later in the summer”.
But easyJet has said the timetable “simply isn’t ambitious enough”.
Chief executive Garry Wilson questioned why more destinations, such as the Canary Islands and the Greek Islands, were not added to the green list.
And he criticised what he described as the “delay” to opening up travel to double-vaccinated people, saying the UK was “falling behind Europe”.
However, the transport secretary said several issues still needed to be resolved before the system could be introduced, including whether children should be given the vaccine and how people from outside the UK could prove their vaccination status.
Mr Shapps told BBC Breakfast there was also a “fairness issue” because younger people had not yet had the opportunity to have their second jab.
He also defended the green watch list as a “maximal transparency approach” but even for countries on the regular green list he said there was no guarantee their status would not change at short notice.
The destinations added to the green list from 04:00 BST on 30 June are:
Europe: The Balearic Islands (which include Ibiza, Menorca, Majorca and Formentera), Malta and Madeira
Caribbean: Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Dominica, Grenada, Montserrat and Turks and Caicos Islands
Other British Overseas Territories: Bermuda, British Antarctic Territory, British Indian Ocean Territory and Pitcairn
Six destinations will also be added to the government’s red list on 30 June. They are the Dominican Republic, Eritrea, Haiti, Mongolia, Tunisia and Uganda.
