Shapps: Travel dependent on vaccination here and elsewhere

Shapps told BBC Breakfast on Wednesday (10 February) a resumption of travel would be firstly dependent on the UK’s vaccination effort continuing apace and filtering down to lower age groups.

He reiterated prime minister Boris Johnson would on 22 February set out a roadmap out of the current Covid lockdown, which he said would be heavily conditional.

"It will be, ‘if this happens and cases are coming down and if we see deaths reducing further and so on and so forth and the vaccination programme is running as planned’, then we’ll set out a series of dates to start the unlock from this lockdown," said Shapps.

Pressed specifically on travel, Shapps said he couldn’t give a definitive answer. "It depends on both the level of vaccination here and, critically, elsewhere," said the transport secretary.

"We’ll need to wait for other countries to catch up as well in order to be able to do that wider international unlock as we can only control the situation here."

Speaking to Sky News, Shapps said he didn’t want to "unnecessarily raise people’s hopes". I’m afraid I can’t give a definitive [on] will there or will there not be the opportunity to take holidays this next year, either at home or abroad.

"I don’t know what the situation will be by the middle of the summer. Nobody can tell from the point that we sit right now."