Matt Hancock gives hope of quarantine rethink
Health Secretary Matt Hancock said he wouldn’t rule out a rethink of the quarantine rules when he appeared on This Morning on Thursday.
Speaking to presenters Eamonn Holmes and Ruth Langsford, Hancock said the Government has been looking carefully at overseas holidays and the rules on quarantine and international travel.
"A few weeks ago, you weren’t very hopeful about foreign holidays," Holmes said. "EasyJet have announced they may have to cut a third of their staff, isn’t that a reason in itself to rethink us as a country about quarantine?"
He then asked Hancock: "Would you rethink the quarantine?"
Hancock replied: "I wouldn’t rule it out."
"This crisis has had a massive impact on airlines across the world," he added. "I am a little more optimistic than I was about being able to get some foreign travel back up.
"The quarantine rules are important and we will keep watching and try to do everything we can to allow the relaxation and freedoms, but you understand we will only do that when it is safe to do so."
When asked by Holmes if it was now not out the question for Britons to keep their fingers crossed about having a July foreign holiday, the Health Secretary added: "I absolutely wouldn’t rule it out. We have got to proceed cautiously."
The response came a few weeks after Hancock last appeared on ITV’s This Morning show saying overseas holidays were unlikely to be possible this summer.
Asked whether ‘summer was cancelled’, he said that was ‘likely to be the case’, adding: "We haven’t made a final decision on that yet but it is clear that we will seek to reopen hospitality, some hospitality, from early July if we keep successfully reducing the spread of this virus, but social distancing of some kind is going to continue."
Bev
Editor in chief Bev Fearis has been a travel journalist for 25 years. She started her career at Travel Weekly, where she became deputy news editor, before joining Business Traveller as deputy editor and launching the magazine’s website. She has also written travel features, news and expert comment for the Guardian, Observer, Times, Telegraph, Boundless and other consumer titles and was named one of the top 50 UK travel journalists by the Press Gazette.
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