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Travellers are caught in an impossible catch-22

Holiday plans were thrown into chaos this weekend when the Government announced that any Britons returning from Spain will have to quarantine for two weeks afterwards.

The decision was sparked by concerns that the country’s rising coronavirus infection rate may lead to a second wave. France, Germany, Belgium and other European countries are also seeing a jump in new cases, and Prime Minister Boris Johnson has not ruled out blacklisting other holiday destinations.

The news will be a huge blow to the tens of thousands of people who have already been through the pain of cancelling one holiday and were holding out for a summer break once lockdown started to lift. Those who have booked to go abroad may find that any changes to the Foreign Office's guidance prove very costly.

Some airlines and tour operators are refusing to cancel trips to Spain and islands such as Majorca, Menorca and the Canaries – despite the new quarantine rules for Britons travelling there. Anyone who no longer wants to visit is unlikely to get their money back if their airline or operator does not cancel the trip.

For those who can’t work from home, a two-week absence from work on top of a holiday will take a large bite out of their wages. Only under extreme circumstances such as their house catching fire or needing to seek medical assistance can people break the quarantine. They have been threatened with 1,000 fines for flouting the rules.

Holiday makers have complained of being caught in an impossible catch-22. They were encouraged to support the travel industry, given a list of supposedly “safe” countries they could visit and diligently followed the rules – but they were given almost no way to protect themselves against cancellations, as there are still precious few options for getting coronavirus-proof travel cover.

Most insurers will void policies if a country is suddenly added to the Foreign Office’s blacklist. One, Battleface, is bucking the trend and promising to cover travellers even if the guidance changes... but it will come at a cost. Its policies can be more than eight times pricier that of the cheapest cover in the market.

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In our comments section, Colin McCleery said of Tax capital gains on homes to abolish stamp duty and raise 481bn, says think tank: "How would this proposal affect homeowners who have taken out equity release lifetime mortgages? Most of these have a condition that regardless of how long the mortgage holder lives there will never be negative equity, but the property would revert to the lender with no benefit to the mortgage holder's estate on disposal. The money raised by the equity release would in all probability have been spent at that stage, so how would the 'capital gain' be calculated, and who would have to pay the tax?"

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