British envoy says travel restrictions row happened due to 'transition' in UK policy

Days after the resolution of the UK-India travel restrictions row, British High Commissioner to India Alex Ellis on Thursday rejected claims that there was any racism angle to it and asserted that it happened due to the ''transition'' in the UK travel policy.

He also said that the centre of the world is coming to India and the Euro-centric world is coming to an end.

Speaking at the Times Now Summit, he said the AUKUS (Australia-UK-US) alliance, a trilateral security partnership, signifies Britain's commitment to the Indo-Pacific Region and to keep it open and secure.

On whether AUKUS complements the Quad, the British envoy called it another addition to the global patchwork of institutions. The Quad is a grouping comprising the US, India, Japan and Australia.

The AUKUS should compliment the Quad, Ellis added.

Asked about the British seemingly taking a skeptical view of India's vaccination programme, he said, ''I completely reject it.'' ''India's vaccine programme is absolutely fantastic. Now about over a billion vaccines delivered, that is an astonishing achievement,'' he asserted and pointed out that 80 per cent of those vaccines are the result of the UK-India cooperation -- Covishield. ''Worth remembering the story of Covishield -- British government funded, researched by one of the greatest universities of the world at Oxford. The absolute quality of the people at Oxford that they went to the people of a commercial firm and said that if we are going to produce a vaccine, it has to be done at cost not profit, a rare thing to do. More impressively, the company, AstraZeneca, says we agree,'' he said.

Putting an end to the vaccine certification row, the UK on October 7 announced that Indians, fully vaccinated with Covishield vaccine, will no longer require to undergo quarantine on their arrival in Britain from October 11.

On the row over the recognition of Covishield, Ellis said the UK did recognize the vaccine and made it ''abundantly clear''.

''What is happening that all countries, including India, are making a transition in their rules for travel. Travel in the pandemic is a complicated thing as we have all learnt. We (the UK) were shifting from a rule based on which country you are coming from to what you have been double jabbed with,'' he said, explaining the reasons that led to the row.

Asked about what he would say to those calling the British action racist and patronizing, Ellis's said, ''That it isn't and it never was.'' He went on to name Indian-origin British ministers such as Rishi Sunak and Priti Patel to underline that ''India is creating an enormous success story in the UK''.

Describing the vaccine certification row as a ''ruffle'', he said it was mainly the result of a transition in travel policy which India then reciprocated.

''We recognized Covishield, we are recognizing Covaxin for the purpose of people coming into the country. We would now like to end restraints on travel which limit the number of flights between UK and India which we would like to increase, we want to enable British citizens to join the citizens of every other country in the world in getting e-visas as that will attract tourist and investment into India,'' the British envoy here said.

On whether the matter could have been handled better, he said everything can be handled better and added that ''we should have been clearer at the start that Covishield was recognized'' as part of the various Astrazeneca vaccines around the world. ''If we would have said that on the day of the start of the change in policy, people here would have understood,'' he said.

The UK recognised Covishield vaccine produced by the Serum Institute of India but retained the 10-day quarantine period for fully vaccinated travellers from India.

The move did not provide any relief from quarantine rules for Indian travellers vaccinated with two doses of Covishield.

Later, British officials said the UK has issues with India's vaccine certification process and not with the Covishield vaccine.

However, the UK then decided to scrap tough COVID-19 quarantine travel rules for 47 destinations, including India.

Following this, India also withdrew the reciprocal Covid checks and restrictions it had imposed on those arriving from the UK.

(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)