Forex Trading For Beginners 2021: Covid-19: PM expected to unveil foreign travel traffic light system

The prime minister is expected to unveil a traffic light system for foreign travel when he gives an update on measures for easing restrictions.

Health minister Edward Argar said the government was acting "very carefully and cautiously" due to the risk of importing new variants.

TUI's Andrew Flintham called for "clear guidelines" for the travel industry.

Boris Johnson is due to make a series of announcements on changes to the rules at a Downing Street briefing.

He is first expected to meet the cabinet to sign off the next stage of lockdown easing in England, which will see non-essential shops reopen and pubs and restaurants start serving outdoors from 12 April.

Later, the prime minister will hold the briefing, where he is expected to confirm countries will be graded under the traffic light system when international leisure travel resumes and outline plans for coronavirus passports.

The government has also announced plans for everyone in England to be given access to two rapid coronavirus tests a week from Friday, in an expansion of its testing programme.

Currently foreign holidays are banned in the UK, with £5,000 fines in England for people trying to travel abroad without a good reason.

Under the current plan for easing restrictions, the earliest date people in England could go abroad for a holiday would be 17 May.

Asked on BBC Breakfast if Europe was likely to be on the "caution list" of destinations due to a surge in cases, Mr Argar said: "That is one of the reasons why we have to be very careful that, as we see an increase across the world in infections, that we get this right, because one of the things we don't want to see - and just as the vaccination programme is working so well - is getting new variants or risking new variants getting imported into this country."

He said at the moment ministers were "very much focused" on the gold standard PCR tests "in the context of travel" and suggested the model where travellers paid for their own tests would continue.

Imperial College London scientist Prof Neil Ferguson told BBC Radio 4's Today programme testing everyone from European countries would be "sensible", rather than "some of the 'red list countries which are far away".

He said there was "concern" over the proportion of cases of the South African variant, which might undermine the UK's vaccine programme, in some European countries such as France and Luxembourg.

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The potential role of vaccine passports is being reviewed by Cabinet Office minister Michael Gove, with the government announcing trials of a series of measures for opening up the economy.

For foreign travel European officials have announced a plan for an EU-wide "Green Digital Certificate", which would allow anyone vaccinated against Covid, or who has tested negative, or recently recovered from the virus, to travel within the region.

Mr Flintham, TUI UK and Ireland's managing director, said the company would take its lead from the government on travel certification, including vaccine certificates, but the industry wanted it to be as "wide as possible".

"So free, ideally free, or cheap testing that is freely available is another major way of getting people moving and also being able to certify that people have actually had the disease and have recovered, therefore they have created these antibodies," he told BBC Breakfast.

He added what the sector did not want the "stop and start" situation of last year with advice changing at short notice.