BTA hosted its second All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) session on business travel this week when members were able to ask Courts questions about quarantine, testing and financial support for the corporate travel sector.

Clive Wratten, BTA’s chief executive, also had a personal meeting with Courts when he pushed for the quarantine exemption for the business travel sector.

“I asked him to continue to consider business travel to be an exemption from quarantine and he agreed to look into it and keep the communication lines open,” said Wratten.

“We will continue to keep pushing for the industry to get testing up and running as soon as we come out of lockdown and to ensure that the correct support is given to us as an industry.”

Wratten also challenged the aviation minister on the government’s current position on airport testing – particularly the 7% success rate figure for detecting the coronavirus that the government has been continuing to rely on.

He pointed out to Courts that the government should consider another report from Oxera which showed rapid testing had a much higher rate of effectiveness in identifying passengers infected with the virus.