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(Adds quotes, French position)
LONDON, July 30 (Reuters) - Britain's transport minister
said on Friday it was essential to have painful travel
restrictions and a cautious approach to countries such as France
to avoid the spread of a coronavirus variant that vaccinations
might be less effective against.
The UK government two weeks ago decided to maintain
quarantine rules for double-vaccinated travellers from France,
even as it scrapped the requirement for travellers from other
medium-risk "amber" countries, citing concern over cases of the
Beta variant.
France has cast England's quarantine measures for travellers
as discriminatory and not based on science as the bulk of
France's Beta variant cases come from the island of La Reunion
in the Indian Ocean.
"I'm looking forward to the whole world being more
accessible," Transport Secretary Grant Shapps told Sky. "We're
moving in the right direction."
"I know it's painful, but I think that generally speaking,
your viewers probably want to see us be cautious rather than
sort of gung-ho on this and that's exactly what we're trying to
do."
Asked about the row with France, one of Britain's favourite
travel destinations, Shapps said he hoped the situation could be
"regularised".
"We do not want to take chances or risks, particularly,
having done so well with vaccination programme with per chance,
you know, a variant which is able to better evade vaccination
which would be tragic having gotten to where we are now," he
told the BBC.
"We are on the cautious side of that, I recognise that, but
I hope that over time we will be able to regularise the position
with France, but we will have to be a bit patient. Next week
will be the first opportunity to look at that."
(Reporting by Alistair Smout and Guy Faulconbridge. Editing by
Andrew MacAskill)
