3. To ask the Scottish Government what the impact might be of any reduction in the number of routes served by Edinburgh airport following the lifting of the Covid-19 restrictions. (S5O-05108)

We expect that the number of routes serving Edinburgh airport will increase following the lifting of Covid-19 restrictions at home and abroad. At this stage, however, it is not possible to predict exact numbers or destinations.

Transport Scotland, working in partnership with VisitScotland and Scottish Development International, has a strong and successful track record of helping Scotland’s airports to secure new routes. We are using that well-established process to work with airports on route recovery. Our overall aim is to help Edinburgh airport to return to 2019 levels of connectivity as quickly as possible once travel restrictions can be safely lifted.

I am very grateful for that answer. Airport managers have confirmed to me that the Administration has conducted no impact analysis as to the long-term effects of the emergency on air travel. There is no route map out of the quarantine hotel requirements, and there has been no assessment of their impact on medium or long-range bookings.

The industry is on its knees, yet the task force established by the Government to offer clarity has not even met yet. When will it meet, and when does the Cabinet secretary expect to have a route map to recovery for this important sector?

The important point is that the measures that we have had to introduce on managed isolation for international arrivals had to be taken forward urgently because of the risk from new variants. Given the clinical advice that ministers received on the risks that are associated with the introduction of new variants into the country, it would have been reckless not to act—and act quickly—on that advice. To be frank, it would be reckless for anyone, even the airports, to suggest that we should have taken much longer to deal with the situation.

We are already considering a potential route map for moving out of the use of managed isolation and the wider international travel restrictions that we have in place. Importantly, however, that route map needs to be driven by data, not by dates. The danger is that some in the aviation industry think that setting a date simply resolves the issues that the international travel restrictions are in place to deal with. It does not.

The reality is that the data on where we will be in April and May on opening our borders is still uncertain, given not only the domestic situation but the international situation. We know that in Europe, for example, the virus is still out of control. I assure the member that we will use the working group that we have set up and our engagement so far with airlines and airports as a mechanism to ensure that we plan our way through the process.