France ready to hit back as Tony Blair says mass testing could cut quarantine

Tony Blair today said the 14-day quarantine requirement for holidaymakers returning from countries such as France or Spain could be cut “substantially” if mass testing was used to minimise risk.

The former Labour prime minister said only regular testing on a huge scale could restore international travel to levels seen before the start of the pandemic.

He spoke as Croatia looked set to become the latest European destination to join the “red list” of nations no longer exempt from the self-isolation rules for returning British tourists.

Coronavirus cases in the Balkan state over the past seven days have risen to 21 per 100,000 of population, above the benchmark of 20 set by the Government.

Tens of thousands of British holidaymakers scrambled back to the UK from France on Friday to beat a quarantine deadline that came into force at 4am on Saturday.

Officials in Paris were expected to announce “tit-for-tat” reciprocal measures for Britons entering France later today.

But Mr Blair said the chaotic scenes could be avoided and the fortnight-long “stay at home” order cut “if you recognise that whatever you do there is going to be a risk, you just have to minimise it”.

Mr Blair, who was premier from 1997 to 2007, was speaking as he launched a report from his think-tank, the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, backed by former Tory leader William Hague and ex-Conservative Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt.

He told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “If you’re not able to test significantly when you’re trying to get large numbers of people back into a normal routine, then I think you’re going to be enormously inhibited at how you handle the disease. And it’s not so difficult to do.”

Mr Blair added: “We suggest how you might boost and accelerate the development of these on-the-spot antigen tests and then we say at a certain stage every person has, as it were, a record of what tests they’ve had, a kind of bio-ID which allows them then to present, for example, when you’re travelling — I just don’t see how you get international travel going again unless you’ve got regular testing.”

Mr Blair continued: “The Government has got to change the way it calculates risk. In every single aspect of this, once you realise you’re not going to eradicate the disease, you’re going to have to contain it and live with it at least until a vaccine comes, then you’ve just got to have a sensible risk calculus in every area.

“So, for example, now we’re telling people to go back into pubs, we’re incentivising, quite rightly for the purposes of getting the economy moving, to go and eat out. All of those things are risks. I think the way we’re doing the quarantine rules is wrong actually. I think you could cut that 14-day quarantine substantially if you recognise that whatever you do there is going to be a risk, you just have to minimise it.”

Currently around 150,000 tests are carried out daily in the UK although Mr Blair claimed there was capacity for double that level. Travel bosses have called for tests to be carried out at airports to avoid the disruptive “cliff edge” of a lengthy compulsory quarantine.

In the wake of Spain’s addition to the “red list” late last month, Heathrow chief executive John Holland-Kaye said: “The UK needs a passenger testing regime and fast. Without it, Britain is just playing a game of quarantine roulette.”

He said he wanted the Government to work with the airport on the plan and he could have testing sites set up and ready “within weeks”.

Latest figures showed that 89 per cent fewer passengers used Heathrow in July compared with the same month last year. This week Iceland is offering visitors the chance to pay for a £50 test on arrival followed by a short five-day quarantine and a second test.