As the travel industry protests against the government’s quarantine measures, Grant Shapps has refused to say whether he would take a holiday this year.

The transport secretary was speaking on the BBC’s Today programme.

Mr Shapps was asked by Mishal Husain: “Would you book a foreign holiday for October half term or Christmas?” The transport secretary said: “I’ll be guided by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office guidance on this.”

The FCO advice against all non-essential travel abroad has been in place since 17 March.

“I would need to see that change in order to know that I can book with confidence,” he said.

Ms Husain said: “I think that’s a ‘no’ – you won’t be booking anything for the whole year?”

The transport secretary replied: “At the moment the advice is that the Foreign and Commonwealth Office say only essential travel.

“That advice would need to change in order to book a ticket knowing you would definitely be able to travel, and that your travel insurance and that sort of thing would be valid.

“But I do want to see this opened up. We do want to see people being able to travel again.”

The transport secretary refused to reveal any details of potential “air bridge” agreements with destination countries, which would allow holidaymakers to avoid the 14-day self-isolation policy that comes into effect on Monday.

Instead he cited the FCO advice, saying: “We can’t at this moment just jump on a plane and travel somewhere without an extremely good reason to be doing so.”

The Foreign Office advice was put in place because of the large number of border closures and flight bans. But as the rest of Europe opens up to tourism, the UK is closing down with a quarantine policy that will stifle summer bookings.

Such is the fury in the travel industry that British Airways and its parent company, IAG, refused to take part in an online government conference on the new self-isolation measures.

BA is offering travellers booked to fly to the UK from Monday onwards the chance to switch to earlier flights without penalty.

Sophie Griffiths, editor of the travel trade journal, TTG, said: “The government are just so desperate to win PR points from the public because of their shambolic treatment of this crisis, that they’re happy to throw an entire industry under the bus.”

But the government’s quarantine policy was backed by Ed Miliband, the shadow energy secretary.

“We have supported the government on this. We have called for it earlier,” he told Today.

“We’ve got to be led by the science. If this is what the science is saying, then it’s got to be done.”

As the chief scientific adviser, Sir Patrick Vallance, made clear at Wednesday’s Downing Street daily briefing, a blanket quarantine policy is appropriate only when a country with a low infection rate is faced with people coming in from many nations with worse records.

“Measures like this are most effective when the number of cases is very low, and they’re most effective when they’re applied to countries from higher rates,” he said.

The UK is second only to the US in the number of coronavirus deaths.

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