Foreign travel: announcement April 5

Boris Johnson “hopes to say more”.

Sky News and the BBC this morning that Prime Minister Boris Johnson says he hopes to be able to say more on foreign travel from the UK by 5 April. At the moment his ministers are watching carefully as infections rise again in Europe.

The government’s global travel task force had been expected to make recommendations on restarting foreign travel on April 12, but Mr. Johnson told a Downing Street news conference that we may hear from him seven days sooner than expected – on April 5.

Johnson said: “A lot of people do want to know about what’s going to happen on the holiday front and I know there’s a great deal of curiosity and interest.”All I can say is it’s just too early to say and my advice is to everybody to wait for the global travel task force to report. We’ve heard already that there are other European countries where the disease is now rising so things certainly look difficult for the time being but we will be able to say more we hope in a few days’ time, I certainly hope to say more by April 5″.

Foreign travel will be decided by Department for Transport task force

The task force – led by the Department for Transport – are looking at the state of the virus in the UK and abroad, the progress of our vaccine rollout, and the “prevalence and location” of concerning variants.

It is unlikely the report would be published before the prime minister signed off on its recommendations as this would risk tying the government’s hands, suggesting Johnson could see the report in advance of the April 12 deadline. It now appears that the recommendations on foreign travel will be made public earlier than first thought.