Overseas travel in connection with foreign homes will be permitted under coronavirus rules to be voted on by MPs.
Alright for some, but let’s be honest how many people have a second home abroad they need to check in on?
It comes as people should plan to holiday in the UK this summer, a senior scientific adviser has said.
Professor Neil Ferguson, whose modelling led to the first UK lockdown last March, said relaxing border measures too early risked the success of the UK’s vaccination programme.
He said the risk from Europe is the arrival of new variants, or importing cases of the troubling South African variant from countries where cases were rising.
Under the rules people leaving England for a foreign holiday could face a £5,000 fine but an exemption dubbed the “Stanley Johnson clause” will allow trips for the “purchase, sale, letting or rental of a residential property”.
The Prime Minister’s father was criticised last July after it emerged he had travelled to Greece to visit his mountain villa despite Government advice urging Britons against all but essential international travel.
He argued that he was on “essential business trying to Covid-proof my property in view of the upcoming letting season”.
The new regulations for the coming months, covering the Prime Minister’s “road map” out of lockdown for England, include a ban on leaving the country without a valid reason.
One of the exemptions allows travel to visit properties, estate agents, sales offices or show homes overseas if a person is seeking to buy or sell a foreign home.
The legislation also gives an exemption for “preparing a residential property to move in” or “to visit a residential property to undertake any activities required for the rental or sale of that property”.
Labour MP Andrew Gwynne told the Guardian: “For hardworking families facing the prospect of missing out on summer holidays, it will stick in the craw that the Government has inserted a ‘Stanley Johnson clause’ to Covid rules that allows people to come and go if they have property abroad.
“It seems it’s one rule for them and another for the rest of us.”
MPs will vote on the Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (Steps) (England) Regulations 2021 on Thursday, with the laws expected to come into force on March 29.
It’s not the first time Stanley has taken the rules into his own hands.
As ever many people were dumbfounded at the exemption and made their feelings on the matter known.
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Related: Britain’s slide into authoritarianism: How the Tories are building a one-party state
