TRAVEL UK NEWS LIVE: 17 COUNTRIES ELIGIBLE FOR GREEN LIST IN REVIEW THIS WEEK, SAYS EXPERT

A further 17 countries should be eligible to join the green list in the next update to the government’s traffic light list for international travel, according to an expert.

Austria, Germany, Poland and Canada are among the destinations that should be bumped up from amber to green, according to research by travel consultancy the PC Agency.

The research has identified 12 countries that could go fully green thanks to Covid rates below 30 cases per 100,000 residents and fairly robust vaccination rollouts: Austria, Bosnia, Canada, the Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia.

Bhutan, French Polynesia, North Macedonia, Norway and Saudi Arabia have been identified as candidates for the green watchlist.

The next review is due to take place this week, either on Wednesday or Thursday.

Meanwhile, a minister has defended the government’s pandemic travel rules amid suggestions a new amber watchlist could be created for countries – possibly including Italy and Spain – which would signal they were close to going red.

Matt Warman, minister for digital infrastructure, denied claims the guidelines were complicated – and defended the idea of moving away from “three cut-and-dried categories” for travel.

“Saying to people if a country is on a watch list there is a risk that it could, for instance, move from green to amber or amber to red seems to me to be providing people with really important information when they’re making significant financial decisions,” he said.