Khan Says Brexit To Blame For Holiday Chaos At Airports

Brexit is to blame for the chaos at Britain's airports, which has seen hundreds of flights cancelled and thousands of people's half-term travel plans disrupted, London mayor Sadiq Khan has said.

- Andrew Woodcock

Mr Khan called on the government to relax immigration rules to allow airport and airline workers who returned to their EU countries of origin following Brexit to come back to the UK, where the travel industry has been hit by staff shortages.

But transport secretary Grant Shapps denied that the problems were caused by the UK's withdrawal from the EU, and rejected calls for aviation workers to be added to the list of shortage occupations, which would mean that those wishing to work in the industry would be subject to lighter immigration controls.

Steve Heapy, the CEO of airline Jet2, confronted Mr Shapps over the impact of Brexit at an emergency meeting on Friday, telling him that EU withdrawal had taken "hundreds of thousands, if not millions" of people out of the jobs market. But yesterday Mr Shapps insisted that the shortages were due to the aviation industry cutting staff numbers "too deep" during the Covid pandemic, and said it was up to companies to attract home-grown workers by offering higher pay.