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People will be allowed to leave the UK to prepare a second home for sale or rent, in accordance with new regulations on the coronavirus that will take effect later this month.
The latest restrictions, which take effect March 29, will include a list of specific “reasonable excuses to travel” out of the country, including what the Labor Party dubbed “the Stanley Johnson clause.”
Boris Johnson’s father Stanley last summer apparently violated Covid guidelines by traveling to his Greek village to make it “Covid-proof.”
The exemption allows individuals to travel abroad “in connection with the purchase, sale, lease, or rental of residential property.” Those activities include visiting a real estate agent, developer sales office, or show home, viewing residential properties to rent or buy, and preparing a property for move-in.
Other exemptions include studying or competing in an elite sporting event.
Labor MP and former shadow cabinet minister Andrew Gwynne said: “For working families facing the prospect of missing summer vacation, it will be difficult for the government to insert a ‘Stanley Johnson clause’ into the rules. of Covid that allows people to come and go if they have properties abroad … It seems that it is still a rule for them and another for the rest of us. “
Another Labor source called it the “Stanley Johnson loophole” for “those who run their real estate empires abroad,” and accused the government of being “only focused on their own privileged lives.”
Anyone caught breaking travel rules by going on vacation faces a fine of up to £ 5,000.
The new rules are part of a tightening of current coronavirus restrictions, which expire every six months and therefore must be renewed again before the end of March.
Other details include exempting protests from the rules against mass gatherings and repealing the tiered system that existed before England’s third national shutdown. While they confirm the Rule of Six that allows a person to meet five other people outside their home starting next Monday, there are no more specific dates tied to the remaining stages of Johnson’s roadmap to get out of lockdown.
Parliamentarians will vote on the measures this Thursday, and also on the Coronavirus Law, which allowed people to claim emergency financial support during the pandemic.
In an attempt to satiate conservative MPs frustrated that ministers cling to emergency powers and refuse to speed up the easing of the blockade, the government has announced that it is removing 12 measures in the law.
But Mark Harper, a conservative supporter and chairman of the Covid Recovery Group, expressed frustration over a “fundamental contradiction” between Johnson that promises a “one-way path to freedom” starting June 21, the final stage of his roadmap to get out of the confinement, and the Coronavirus Law is extended until October.
He said: “The Coronavirus Act contains some of the most draconian arresting powers in modern British legal history, and if ministers want to renew its provisions, they must show that they are proportionate, reasonable and evidence-based. For each and every one of the temporary measures that the government wishes to maintain, the burden falls on them to present, in parliament, a very clear justification.
“If the government wants parliament to pass a law on Thursday making it illegal for families to celebrate Easter together, ministers must be prepared to say they want these laws to be constantly monitored and enforced.
“It is harmful to pass laws that are not enforced and it is unfair to put police officers in an impossible position.”
Johnson is expected to win comfortably when the Coronavirus Act and new regulations are voted on later this week, as the Labor Party has said it supports all measures necessary to contain the pandemic.
Sir Keir Starmer said Monday that his “default position” on the extension of the legislation would be to support it. “We are not out of the pandemic,” he told LBC radio. “We are still rolling out the vaccine, and in those circumstances, I think the government needs these powers and I would be slow to vote against the powers that allow legal sick pay to start from day one, which is very important during the pandemic, and against the provisions that say you cannot be evicted during the pandemic if you have fallen behind on the arrears. “
But several disgruntled Conservative MPs will continue to vote against it, including libertarian Steve Baker, who told Sky News’s Sophy Ridge On Sunday program that the powers the government seeks to maintain are “excessive and disproportionate.”
Some of those particularly resistant to lockdown had lobbied for restrictions to be removed from March 8, the date schools in England reopened, and also three weeks from when the four main groups prioritized for a vaccine against the coronavirus should have received their first dose.
