Race to Zero: CEOs call for healthy, resilient and inclusive zero-carbon recovery

In today's Telegraph Mark Wallace, Chief Executive of ConservativeHome points to the corrosive way politicians used the EU to avoid their responsibility - now it must end .

Leaving the EU means that politicians must take greater responsibility for their failures. It is no longer sufficient to blame Brussels, with an impotent shrug, or to overlook the damaging Whitehall tendency to gold-plate regulation. Now that they actually have the power to resolve the problems they rail against on migration, or trade, or business red tape, MPs and ministers must actually do so, or explain why not.

Not only is democratic self-government better than the alternatives, but the limits placed upon it by EU membership were corrosive to good faith in our politics. Those who wanted to avoid responsibility had the perfect excuse, and those who wanted to implement change were too often forbidden from doing so

.In taking up new responsibilities, politicians will have to realise that they cannot possibly do everything that everybody wants. They will have to prioritise, and to take sides on major issues where they were previously exempted.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/12/30/must-kill-top-down-nanny-state-2021/?fbclid=IwAR1D_AL3BpFQ7nQqKZq1TQzxG_y_6YyHZOG_ywutbZ-f7IE-kYObNc_iqwg

The language of Never Again should resonate – we should not have to mobilise to Save the NHS – that was only necessary because it has been underfunded and successive governments had failed to prepare for the pandemic – although a pandemic was at the top of the UK's risk register

Today is the 72nd anniversary of the founding of the NHS in 1948 as part of the post-war consensus.  For 10 weeks on Thursday evenings large numbers of people have stood at their front doors or on balconies to applaud the NHS expressing their appreciation for the people who deliver the medical care. During the lockdown many people "noticed", many for the first time, the efforts of those whose work enables our society to function. The clapping has been for the NHS staff who worked tirelessly to deliver the health service we and they care for. Today is a day for celebration and remembrance. Clapping is not enough NHS wages for many staff are low and the service, in which the country takes such pride, is underfunded. Dangerously underfunded in its unpreparedness to tackle the Covid-19 pandemic. As we shall see it knew that it was unprepared. There is no realistic prospect of pay rises for NHS staff from porters and security staff to consultants.

As Maurice Glasman has pointed out  one of the consequence of the pandemic has been "the visibility and necessity of the working class." Those who stack shelves, collect the rubbish, maintain the sewers, deliver the post - these workers so often 'invisible'  have been at work throughout the pandemic. They are the working class, the workers who cannot work from home. "Covid-19 has reminded us of the "importance of the working class to our well-being and survival is recognised as it has not been for decades, and labour value has been reaffirmed" writes Glasman.

"People working in elementary jobs faced the greatest risk. Of those, there were more security guard deaths than in any other profession at 74.0 per 100,000, or 104 deaths." Telegraph 

How soon will we forget? It seems likely that we shall forget very quickly. As Edmund Burke, a founding father of Conservatism. pointed out "Those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it.” If we fail to learn from past mistakes we shall repeat them.

The government pledged to give the NHS whatever it needs to tackle the pandemic. The Chancellor will on Wednesday spell out his plans for public spending. NHS England says that it needs and additional £10bn. The annual NHS budget is £140bn, if provided that would be an increase of 7%.  £10bn is the NHS's estimate of the cost of fighting the virus and reopening the normal services. The money would mean the NHS could create extra beds in hospitals, keep the Nightingale facilities on standby, send patients to private hospitals for surgery and provide protective equipment for frontline staff. The sticking point in the negotiations between the NHS/Department of Health and Social Care and the Treasury is reported to be the NHS’s insistence that the Treasury continues to underwrite the £400m-a-month cost of the contract the Department agreed with private hospitals in March to treat NHS patients. The Treasury is insisting that the temporary contract with the private hospitals be maintained for fear of waiting list hitting 10m by Christmas. more

At some point in the future there will doubtless be an inquiry into the government's handling of the pandemic and the preparations for epidemics made by successive governments. However, preparations need to be made now.  There is a significant risk that Covid-19 will return and and that the NHS will again risk being overwhelmed. Much of what follows is based on the Daily Telegraph (DT), widely referred to in the UK as the "Torygraph," the daily paper of the Conservative Party.

There have been many mistakes:

• The Cygnus Report in 2017 and the Silver Swan exercise in Scotland in 2015, both revealed that Britain was ill-prepared to cope with a pandemic. The problems of staffing, PPE and care homes were amongst the issues identified in these exercises. Track, trace and isolate was abandoned in the early stages of the pandemic because of a lack of resources and preparation.
• "Britain prepared for a herd immunity strategy to contain Covid-19, while other countries focused on enhanced testing capacity. The assumption a new virus could not be contained is also explicitly stated in the governments pandemic strategy documents. "We discussed the levels of herd immunity as part of that scenario," a Whitehall source said." The "government formally refused a request for the release of the findings of the 2016 pandemic drill, code-named Exercise Cygnus, under the terms of the Freedom of Information Act."
  "A senior Whitehall official involved in drawing up Cygnus, a major test of this country’s pandemic preparations held in October 2016, admitted lessons from other countries had been “entirely ignored”.  “Everything we planned for was based on the idea that a disease would kill lots and lots of people,” the official told the Telegraph. “We didn’t spend a lot of time exploring how we could prevent it in the first place. Instead we looked at how we could build up mortuary space and intensive care beds after it had already spread. “I can’t remember that we ever discussed what they were doing in South Korea and places like that. It simply wasn’t on our radar. We were sort of ploughing our own furrow. “Given the current lack of testing capacity and PPE, you could say that was a mistake.""While nations in the Asia Pacific region make up 9 percent of the world’s population, they have only experienced 1 percent of the cases, and less than 1 percent of the deaths. Britain, meanwhile, is expected to suffer the highest death rate in Europe. Many Asian nations had already drawn up plans for mass testing using networks of public laboratories to chart the spread of disease, and prevent it spreading, according to documents seen by the Telegraph. DT 18 April 2020
• PPE: "Last week five million surgical masks and more than a million respirators were packed on to EU-registered lorries by one UK wholesaler." DT
  Andrew Pear chief executive of Reliance Medical, a Staffordshire-based PPE supplier which imports from Shanghai, said tighter customs inspections were holding up shipments to Britain. Pear said: “Britain needs to take a long hard look at this and ask whether we can afford to leave our PPE manufacturing supply in the hands of other countries. Shipbuilding, munitions and armaments are almost exempt from free-trade rules because nation-states take precautions in case they need them in the time of war. Britain needs to fight a war against a virus, restarting old industries that make aprons and masks. That’s the only real long-term solution.” DT
• John Edmunds, Professor of Infectious Disease Modelling at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, is the first member of Sage to state openly that failing to implement restrictions earlier was a potentially lethal decision. Testing for coronavirus was severely limited at the beginning of the crisis as Public Health England (PHE) struggled to ramp up capacity, and on March 13 community testing stopped entirely, leaving scientists in the dark about levels of infection outside of hospitals. Prof Edmunds also appeared to criticise lack of community testing saying ‘situational awareness’ had been inadequate to gain a better understanding of the epidemic. Speaking at the Science Technology Select Committee, Prof Kay, who has called the decision to stop community testing “the greatest scandal of the epidemic” said: “If we had that data much earlier in the crisis we would have been able to make much better forecasts.  “I think that would be a major subject for investigation. My strong sense is there was an insistence on centralisation of the process of testing and monitoring testing. “There were many university labs that had the capacity to do this work if they were allowed to do it and would have allowed us to ramp up testing.” DT
• "Cleaners, porters and office staff working for the NHS were "super-spreaders" of coronavirus within hospitals, according to initial results from a national screening drive. The discovery has prompted health bosses to examine how lower-paid workers can be better protected from the virus in the event of a second coronavirus wave, he said. It comes amid growing suspicion that a large proportion of virus cases were spread by medical workers rather than in the community."  "...  "surprising" initial figures suggesting that the main vectors of the virus were not necessarily front line medics on intensive care wards but porters, cleaners and backroom office staff." DT
• "In May, NHS England said a fifth of patients with Covid-19 in some hospitals were thought to have contracted the disease while already being treated there for other illnesses. Some of the infections were passed on by hospital staff unaware they had the virus and displaying no symptoms, health bosses said." DT 
• Matt Hancock, the Health Secretary, said hospital patients who tested positive for Covid-19 would continue to be discharged into care homes despite growing evidence that the policy is fuelling outbreaks and deaths.  Mr Hancock claimed no care home residents had "died unnecessarily" from coronavirus despite figures suggesting care home could account for at least a quarter of total virus deaths in the UK. DT
• A paper by the Care Homes Sub group which was submitted to the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) on May 12th, warned that the new disease cases were linked to the connection between care homes and hospitals. Discharging hospital patients back into care homes was an ‘important source' of infection, government experts have admitted, as new figures show that more than half of care homes have had a confirmed case of Covid-19. The ONS separately released data showing that nearly 20,000 residents in England and Wales have died with coronavirus in their care home. DT 
• "Ministers and Public Health England were warned in early April that staff working in multiple care homes could be unwittingly spreading coronavirus among the elderly – five weeks before the Government finally issued guidance restricting workers to one institution." "An official study conducted in mid-April found that symptomatic staff were self-isolating and being replaced by “bank” staff who worked at multiple homes." "Scientists also recommended effectively quarantining elderly patients in “intermediate” Nightingale-type facilities before transferring them back to care homes, but the idea was never taken up nationally. Government advisers later concluded that discharging hospital patients back into care homes was an “important source” of infection." "the deputy chief medical officer privately warned ministers of the concerns following a meeting on April 9."...call[s] into question Matt Hancock’s claim that “right from the start we’ve tried to throw a protective ring around our care homes". "DHSC’s guidance on controlling the spread of infection in care homes, published on April 16, made no mention of restricting the movement of staff.""At least 19,394 residents died with coronavirus in care homes between March 2 and June 12. " On 15 May [DHSC] published [their] care home support package which followed the latest evidence from PHE and recommended a range of measures care homes could take to limit the spread of the virus. This included limiting the movement of staff.” DT
• The government must have know that Test, Track and Isolate would be an essential part of moving out of lockdown papers from the Scientific Advisory Group on Emergencies show routine testing and tracing of contacts was stopped because Public Health England’s systems were struggling to deal with a handful of cases. At a meeting on Feb 18, advisors said PHE could only cope with testing and tracing contacts of five Covid-19 cases a week, with modelling suggesting it might only be possible to increase this to 50 cases. Advisors then agreed it was "sensible" to shift to stopping routine testing - despite acknowledging that such a decision would “generate a public reaction”. The decision to give up on testing those with symptoms of coronavirus is now seen as the key reason the UK has the highest death toll in Europe. DT
  3 July 2020 "Test and Trace is failing to identify 25 per cent of contacts" DT
• Deloitte was proud to secure the contact for Covid-19 testing. Despite a string of major accounting scandals leading to fines and regulatory investigations, the Big Four accounting firms – Deloitte, EY, KPMG and PwC – are among the most high-profile winners of outsourcing contracts. Deloitte has come under fire from doctors for its work on increasing coronavirus testing capacity for frontline workers and delays in getting results to people who have been tested. Hospital bosses wanted to oust the firm last month because they felt it was doing a poor job. The firm is also working on procurement of personal protective equipment (PPE) by reviewing new manufacturers that may be able to post supplies. DT
• Department of Health  figures report that between 28 May and 17 June 128,566 'close contacts' of people tested positive had been identified. Of these 15,812 were classified as non-complex and contacted through the "wider online and call centre capacity" run by Serco. 112,754 contacts were traced by "local health protection teams[managing] complex cases linked to outbreaks." So the Serco system traced just 12.3% and only the simpler cases.   Serco deployed a 21,000 strong army of tracers funded by a contract worth £45m. There are 3,000 or so public health officials 50 times more productive than the Serco tracers. (Source Private Eye 16 July 2020) "Newly recruited “contact tracers”, who have been hired by outsourced call centre giants Serco and Sitel on behalf of the Department of Health and Social Care, have reported spending hours trying to log into online systems, having no work to do, and experiencing technical and quality issues with the training they received." Personnel Today

Successive governments, including the current one, have said that they will solve the social care problem. Without a solution the NHS will continue to suffer from bed blocking.

The Daily Express on June 3rd published the results of a poll it funded: "A damning survey for the Daily Express reveals two-thirds of those aged 55-plus support the increase. And 41 percent across all age groups agree that a ring-fenced general tax increase is the best way forward. They want an end to the scandal of pensioners handing over their savings and selling their homes to pay for care. The system's failings have been cruelly exposed by the coronavirus pandemic......Our poll found more than half of the 2,094 adults aged 55-plus (58 percent) believe it is unacceptable to force the older generation to sell their family homes to pay care home bills. And 49 percent across all ages agreed. Almost the same number (54 percent) believe it is unfair to put property or a hard-saved nest egg into a means test to qualify for financial help.

The Covid-19 crisis has raised serious concerns about governance and the preparatory planning for pandemics and decision making during this one. Awareness of the crisis in health and social care is now very clear. Although some have presented this as a source of intergenerational conflict, the elderly who have died are the parents and grandparents of people now concerned about their own care in old age.

Never again

There is an urgent need to develop a consensus to tackle some of the fundamental challenges that the UK faces and which require a consistent approach over several parliaments if the UK is to thrive. The collective expression of support for NHS and Social Care staff expressed in clapping on Thursdays at 8 pm for 10 weeks is indicative of public support and love of the service. There is strong public support for the NHS combined with mounting concern for its future.

Failures by successive governments to ensure adequate preparations for a pandemic resulted in the government priority to defend the NHS, just when we should have been able to rely on the NHS to defend us. In the front line, the doctors, nurses, porters and cleaners did defend us, despite the lack of preparation and of the PPE to do it. This was achieved by discharging elderly patients, untested for Covid-19, into Social Care.  One-third of all UK fatalities form Covid-19 were in care homes, 16,000.

Much of the NHS is managed by the developed assemblies in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland leaving the UK government to oversee England.

Britain needs to ensure that the NHS is adequately funded and is resilient to cope with pandemics. The scientists expect that there will be further epidemics and pandemics. The next one may be more or less aggressive and deadly. It would be prudent to assume that the next one will be worse and plan for it. Successive governments has failed to reform social care, was unable to ensure the maintenance of adequate stock piles of PPE and ventilators, and failed to provide robust Public Health services, including having a track and trace system in place to scale up in the face of a pandemic. There should have been an app in place prior to the pandemic to facilitate track, trace and isolate.
Covid-19 has revealed significant weakness in the UK’s ability to deal with a pandemic. This has raised some fundamental questions about the competence of government, civil service, Public Health England, local government and the NHS. Funding for resilience is always easy to cut, the important displaced by the urgent.  A system-level review is required to ensure that the UK is prepared for the next epidemic or pandemic.

Between 2011 and 2018, the WHO tracked 1483 epidemic events in 172 countries. The World Bank (09/2019) published A World at Risk, the graphic below comes from page12.  It would be foolish to think that Covid-19 is the last event of its kind. The World Bank concludes that we are entering a “new era of high-impact, potentially fast-spreading outbreaks that are more frequently detected and increasingly difficult to manage.”

As of late May there had been a very significant fall in people's confidence in the government's handling of the pandemic.  Guardian 

This week’s Economist (16-22 May) points out that even before the pandemic globalisation was in trouble, weakened by the financial crisis in 2008/9 and the Sino-American trade war, now it is “reeling from its third body blow in a dozen years.” The lockdown has resulted in sealed borders, even within the Schengen area, xenophobia and populism are on the rise and Britain looks set to crash out of the EU and become reliant on WTO rules. The Economist reckons that 90% of people live in countries with largely closed borders and that many countries will open up only to countries with similar health protocols. As the Economist says: “The underlying anarchy of global governance is being exposed.”

My friends in Africa are asking how is it that it is in Europe, the US, Russia and parts of Asia that the strongmen are coming to the fore – it used to be Africa. There is a crisis of governance in Europe revealed by the pandemic. Many countries in the Caribbean have had almost no cases. In South Africa there are to date 14,355 confirmed cases and 261 deaths. That is 261 deaths to date, we lost 170 just today, and 181 deaths in hospitals yesterday in England. Do the maths. As the Economist has pointed out the government has stopped showing the slide tracking UK deaths against other European countries at the daily press conferences. It was last shown on May 9^th when Britain was the highest in Europe.

Many are now using the language of war to describe our response to Covid-19. It is therefore appropriate to look back to WWII, these are dark days for the UK. The Economist reports a poll published on April 25^th, voters judging Britain’s government to have performed worse than those of China, Germany, France, South Korea, Japan and Australia. By May 5^th, Italy and Spain had joined the list. In Europe, Britain’s early dismissal of lockdown was seen as reminiscent of the government’s disregard for the risks of leaving the EU – if the Economist is to be believed our reputation abroad is at a low ebb. It has been hard for several years to explain why we are leaving the EU, I am now asked why we have dealt the Covid-19 so badly.

The Daily Mail reports  that “Some 39 per cent of the nation are supportive of the Government's handling of the crisis, down nine points on the 48 per cent recorded last week, while disapproval rose from 36 per cent to 42 per cent.”

The post-WWII settlement, Keynesianism, the NHS and the Welfare State lasted until the mid-seventies, Thatcherism and neo-liberalism followed. While the Labour Government is credited with the implementation, the consensus which made it possible was generated by the traumatic experiences of the inter-war depression which resulted in fascism and World War II. Most analyses of the Weimar Republic and the rise of fascism in Germany point to the weakness of effective democratic opposition.

Thankfully we are not yet in a comparable situation, but we do have a weak opposition, the four nations of the UK are beginning to tackle Covid-19 differently, there is a significant risk of a major depression, and in parts of Europe the radical right is gaining popularity and taking power. It was not all bad in the inter-war period. In the 1930s, when money was cheap to borrow as it is today, there was a national housing effort. Between 1920 and 1930 about 1.5m houses and flats were built in Britain, by the outbreak of war one-third of all houses in England & Wales had been constructed after WW1.

The post-war consensus endured for 30 years, followed by a return to neoliberal policies which culminated in the 2008-9 economic crash. The banks were bailed out, and austerity followed. That is again a risk. The Conservatives won the last election gaining northern seats, where electors were frustrated by the failure of successive governments to address the decline in transport infrastructure and employment in the North. The current government has begun to focus on regional development, reversing the ending of regional policy under Thatcher.

If Britain is to change as a result of Covid-19 we shall need beyond to unite beyond individual campaigns for change, a broad movement for reorientation and reconstruction will need to emerge. Short-termism bedevils UK politics. Time was when policy changes occurred when there was a change of government, in recent years policy changes happen with monotonous and damaging regularity, whenever the minister changes.

How as the post-WWII consensus formed?  This is from Peter Sioman’s The Liberal Party and the Economy. 1929-1964 p.114

The opposition parties are weak. NGOs, unions, think tanks and lobby group are about their business and all power to their elbow. But we need to find a way to unite and engage with the law makers and those who determine budgets.

Can we use the Select Committees to create a consensus for change?

What are the three core elements of a new post-covid-war settlement?

Justin Francis CEO of Responsible Travel
I have a very strong feeling that we are absolutely NOT all in this together when it comes to the tourism COVID recovery.   I don’t recognise, or like how our industry is being characterised (cruise ships, airlines, tech giants needing tax payer bailouts).  For me this is not the bedrock of tourism, or those most in need.  Read his view here.

James Frayne, Director of Public First and author of Meet the People, a guide to moving public opinion, writes on Conservative Home that the country will have to undertake a comprehensive Fairness Audit of the Coronavirus crisis, and sets out five critical issues that must be addressed.
At some point in the not-too-distant future, informally or formally, the country will undertake a comprehensive Fairness Audit of the Coronavirus crisis. Read his view here

Simon Sappers, of Labour Campaign for Human Rights (LCHR), describes how theCovid crisis has brought Social Rights into sharp relief
The ongoing Covid crisis has brought the issue of so-called Social Rights into sharp relief. These rights are to food, housing, health, work and education, and whilst novel in the UK, are not uncommon in other countries.
Read his view here.

Matthew Taylor Royal Society of Arts
The path from crisis
The Covid-19 pandemic is generating momentum for change in many parts of society. But perhaps the biggest shift of all would be an appetite for new leadership. Read his view here

The Covid-19 epidemic is an urgent crisis, spread between countries rapidly by people flying around the world. The British Foreign & Commonwealth Office has advised against all but essential travel "indefinitely". The UN World Tourism Organisation reported that 100% of tourism destinations now have travel restrictions in place. 45% have totally or partially closed their borders for tourists, 30% of destinations have suspended international flights either totally or partially. The EU closed all Schengen Borders for 30 days from 17 March. Aljazeera has a useful country by county list of border closures.

Covid-19 is not the only crisis confronting us. The UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres, pointed out on Earth Day, that the toll taken by the virus is both "immediate and dreadful". But the crisis is also a wake-up call, "to do things right for the future." He argues that "Public funds should be used to invest in the future not the past." The subsidies to businesses which damage our environment must cease and polluters must pay for their pollution. Climate risks must be at the heart of all public policy.

Aviation has been hit very hard by the pandemic. It will be some time before significant numbers of people will be travelling again. Airlines are grounded. Airbus has suspended its dividend, cut production by a third and furloughed thousands of staff , Boeing is planning to cut 15,000 jobs, and Rolls Royce is to cut 8,000 jobs.

Is the crisis an opportunity?
The average age of a commercial aircraft is about 25 years for a short-haul aircraft and 35 years for a long-haul aircraft. Aircraft entering service now will still be flying post-2050, or at least that is the plan.. As other industries decarbonise, aviation will be responsible for an increasing proportion of global greenhouse emissions and guilty of worsening climate change.

The French government's rescue of Air France is contingent on a reduction in domestic flying and Air France becoming "the most environmentally respectful airline". "When you can travel by train in less than two and a half hours, there is no justification for taking a plane." M. Le Maire, France's Minister of the Economy and Finance, said the coronavirus crisis provided an opportunity to "reinvent our model of economic development to ensure it is more respectful of the environment".

2% of the fuel used by Air France's planes would have to be derived from alternative, sustainable sources by 2025 and by 2030 the airline would have to cut its carbon emissions by half per passenger and per kilometre from 2005 levels. more

The pandemic creates two opportunities for better aviation:

1. Conditional financial support, tied to increased carbon efficiency with enforceable targeted reductions. There need to effective sanctions to ensure compliance with the conditions.
   
2. Redundant engineers and designers could be employed with scientists in industry and universities to achieve the step change the industry requires to decarbonise. The Royal Society concluded in a report in September 2019 that
   "Synthetic biofuels and efuels offer a medium (5 to 10 years) and a long term (10+ years), transition pathway to decarbonisation by reducing fossil fuel use in transport modes such as shipping, aviation and heavy-duty vehicles."
   
   The dependency of aviation on government bailouts creates an ideal opportunity for governments to encourage and fund a step change and to develop new technologies which could provide sustainable jobs through green technology and a commercial lead for UK Ltd.
   

A note on the British Dimension
Back on 24 March the UK government ruled out immediate direct aid to the aviation sector. The Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak said that firms must first tap all commercial avenues to raise funds, and that any assistance the state does provide will be structured to protect taxpayer interests.

British Airways* appears to have accepted that there is “no government bailout standing by” and is turning to cost cutting. BA is now owned by the International Airlines Group which is reported to be targeting BA rather than its other airlines because it has the highest costs in the group. BA is reported to be planning 12,000 redundancies; it currently has 42,000 employees. Branson has put Virgin Atlantic up for sale, the loss making airline has failed to meet the criteria for the UK Treasury’s Covid Corporate Financing Facility,

*Although BA still flies the flag it is important to remember that it merged with Iberia in 2011. The International Consolidated Airlines Group, S.A, is an Anglo-Spanish multinational airline holding company with its registered office in Madrid, As British Airways was the larger company, those holding shares in British Airways at the time of the merger were given 55% of the shares in the new, merged company. British Airways and Iberia ceased to be independent companies and instead became 100% owned subsidiaries of IAG.

These are extraordinary times, a return to business as usual looks improbable. The IMF is predicting that the 'Great Lockdown' will result in the worst recession since the Great Depression, and far worse than the Global Financial Crisis. They say that there is considerable uncertainty about what the economic landscape will look like when we emerge from this lockdown. Professor Neil Ferguson,  of Imperial College London, has this morning said that social distancing will need to be maintained until a vaccine has been found. "If we relax measures too much we'll see a resurgence of transmission. We will have to maintain some level of social distancing indefinitely until we have a vaccine available." While it is fair to say that there is debate amongst epidemiologists Ferguson has been influential in advising the UK government.

Covid-19 is a global pandemic, but its impacts and the responses to it have varied significantly around the world.  Just as countries imposed lockdown at different times, they are reducing restrictions on different timetables and in different ways. Of course, this reflects the diversity of our world, itself a significant driver of demand for tourism. 

The diversity of impacts and responses will make a recovery for travel and tourism significantly more difficult for travel and tourism than for many other sectors.  In my last blog, I wrote about how national governments and local authorities are acting to discourage and prevent domestic tourism and people visiting second homes. Destinations have closed to visitors and tourists, the lockdowns have significantly reduced even local travel.  Google has been producing Community Mobility Reports featuring countries from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe – you might like to look yours up.

For tourism to be possible, the lockdown has to have been lifted at the same time in the source market and the destination. And the traveller needs to be confident that their destination is safe and that there is no risk of being trapped in the destination by a lockdown in the destination or at home. There are likely to be further lockdowns and compulsory quarantine for travellers whenever coronavirus spikes. The travellers will also need to be confident that the risk of catching the virus travelling to the airport, on the plane, coach, train or cruise liner is low. Fear will remain a major deterrent, and travel insurance may continue to be unavailable or expensive for cover for risks associated with the pandemic. 

For anyone who knows The Gambia the photographs of the deserted  Senegambia strip and the beach are distressing. There, and in so many destinations in the developing world,  many families are dependent on employment in tourism or on selling goods or services to tourists from wealthier countries. They live hand to mouth, and the tourists are no longer arriving. For them, there are no government bailouts. On 19^th March The Gambia banned flights from thirteen countries after recording its first case of coronavirus it prioritised the health of its people.  Gambians and non-Gambians travelling from 47 countries in Asia, Europe and the Americas to The Gambia will undergo mandatory quarantine for 14 days. There are many countries in the developing world where livelihoods will be severely impacted by the loss of incomes from tourism and government revenues will be significantly reduced. The damage will be far greater than in their originating markets.

As China has moved to ease restrictions in Wuhan, a new coronavirus flare-up has arrived along its remote northern border with Russia in Heilongjiang province. The frontier has been sealed, and emergency medical units rushed to the area to prevent travellers from bringing the virus back from overseas. Across Europe, different nation-states are relaxing the lockdown and social distancing rules in a variety of ways.

Aviation has been hit hard. IATA reports that worldwide flights are down almost 80%  IATA expects domestic flights to bounce back before international recovery, with revenue per passenger-km down 33% year on year by Q4, implying a 55% fall in passenger revenues. IATA is assuming that restrictions on international passenger arrivals will be reduced cautiously. EasyJet chief executive Johan Lundgren is forecasting that "restrictions on domestic flying would be lifted first, but with social distancing measures in place at airports and on flights for an unspecified time….  We don't know when flying will resume again. Nobody can tell what the level of demand will be when this comes back." It is expected that social distancing will be required onboard aircraft, and this will reduce passenger numbers on fights and necessarily increase ticket prices.

I have no crystal ball, and I have no more ability to forecast the future than anyone else, but the evidence suggests that an early return to business, as usual, is highly unlikely.

The sources used for this piece and much more information about the impact of Covid-19 on travel and tourism can be found here