A decision on France’s place in the international travel traffic-light system is not expected until next week, according to the UK government.
France is currently on the amber-plus list, with holidaymakers returning from the country being required to self-isolate.
But transport secretary Grant Shapps said a decision on its status will be taken “by this time next week” as part of the regular travel list update every three weeks.
Asked if the decision could be taken before then, the minister told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “No, it’s only six days away actually, so I wouldn’t expect anything in advance of that, but it is the moment at which this will be looked at.”
Asked if that also means waiting to hear whether Spain will join the amber-plus list, Mr Shapps said: “That’s right. I would encourage people to broadly ignore the sort of ongoing speculation as much as is possible.”
He added: “One thing I have seen over the last year with all this going on is that, quite often, the speculation is not all that helpful, or all that accurate indeed.
“When we get the information from the Joint Biosecurity Centre, that’s the first point at which it really becomes clarified.”
"We do not want to take chances or risks, particularly, having done so well with vaccination programme with per chance, you know, a variant which is able to better evade vaccination which would be tragic having gotten to where we are now," he told the BBC.
"We are on the cautious side of that, I recognise that, but I hope that over time we will be able to regularise the position with France, but we will have to be a bit patient. Next week will be the first opportunity to look at that."
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