UK Covid live: Grant Shapps defends government’s decision to put France on UK’s ‘amber plus’ list

Latest updates: Delta variant is ‘an issue’ in northern France, transport secretary says

Also this morning, Grant Shapps has said the government does not plan to introduce vaccine passport requirements for entry to shops or pubs.

But the transport secretary said they will be required for “close contact” venues like nightclubs.

So most people have already had their vaccinations anyway - and I’m talking about adults who have had their vaccinations anyway.

So, for most people this doesn’t matter one way or the other. It does protect not just your life but other people’s lives when you get vaccinated, so of course, as a society, we should be encouraging it.

Grant Shapps has defended the government’s decision to put France on the UK’s “amber plus” travel list due to the threat posed by the Beta variant which the transport secretary claims is “an issue” in the north of the country.

The restrictions, which will apply to travellers coming from France but not other European countries, have been branded “discriminatory” and “excessive” by the French Europe minister, Clément Beaune.

The Beta variant, it is not just – as has been reported – on an island thousands of miles away, it was also an issue in particular in northern France. So it has been an overall concern.

And look, the big concern is that we don’t allow a variant in which somehow is able to escape the vaccine programme that we have got.

We don’t want to have got this far with vaccinations, with just getting towards 90% of all adults having been vaccinated, and then throw it all away because a variant that the vaccine perhaps couldn’t handle came in.

Related: Coronavirus live news: Philippines locks down 13 million in Manila; Japan to expand state of emergency

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