We need to stop endless reviews to save Britain’s summer
Boris Johnson’s roadmap to unravel lockdown has lifted spirits across the nation. The reopening timetable is something to look forward to after so many months of isolation. When the ExCeL built the first Nightingale in March last year this felt like a distant dream. We were told vaccines could take years in development, PPE was running out and there were not enough ventilators to meet projected demand.
Now, thanks to a tough third lockdown that has devastated more communities, taken more businesses to the brink and delayed more children’s education we can finally look forward to returning to our way of life. And with the Government’s excellent vaccination programme taking hold, it feels unlikely there will be another national lockdown.
So, when will our summer really start? There is still a real risk that summer starts too late with the August bank holiday. The festival season is a good bellwether. Events scheduled near the August bank holiday – Reading, Leeds – are going ahead whilst earlier get-togethers like Glastonbury are not.
Saving our summer, and all the jobs that are created by it, require rapid action, not endless reviewing. We have been told that vital proposals around testing at venues will be trialled in April.
Health Passports are under two separate reviews with Michael Gove handling domestic policy and Grant Shapps handing international arrangements. And, the DCMS is still dithering on whether to support an insurance scheme for the events sector. We could have to wait until May for a decision.
We already have the infrastructure to test at events now. Health passports are inevitable. The whole point of insurance is to accelerate recovery rather than waiting until it hasn’t happened anyway.
Instead of throwing needless energy at vaccine passports, despite not having conclusive evidence it stops transmission, we could put in a meaningful system of mass testing.
What we can do is test and upload Covid test results to the NHS app allowing everyone to keep themselves safe. Rapid testing would be available everywhere. A single negative test would last for 72 hours for most activities. It is already a requirement for most international travel.
The decision to introduce hotel quarantine for so-called “red-list” countries has been a fiasco. The Brazil variant, as we saw over the weekend, has made its way to the UK. If it stays in place until the summer it risks undermining confidence, going forwards travel restrictions need to be proportionate and reasonable.
Instead, we should get international travel restarted sooner rather than later by negotiating common testing and quarantine arrangements along our most important links. London to New York, London to Los Angeles and London to Dubai cover a huge proportion of our international travel and are all cities that are of strategic economic importance.
To restore confidence, and claw back millions of jobs, the Government-backed reinsurance cover smaller gatherings from May 17th and the full suite from June 21st . Failure to take swift action will result in either more government subsidy or, worse, major unemployment as current support schemes end without any work to go back to.
The final, but crucial hurdle, to regaining lost economic ground will be the return to offices. The UK has had the lowest rate of office occupancy throughout this pandemic, amongst the G7 countries. Even the French, not widely celebrated for their national productivity, have been at work more than us. Our whole economy is based on office-led working and we cannot change this overnight without causing unnecessary job losses and bankruptcies.
In cities like Bangkok, Singapore and Tokyo more people have been at work, eating out and meeting friends than at any point in London. We must catch up. For most of us, summer begins with the May half term. This year doesn’t have to be so different if we take these steps.