Following calls to deploy the British Army in to help sort out the chaos hitting UK airports the Transport Secretary Grant Shapps said that they will not be called in.
Shapps who was speaking on the BBC’s Sunday Morning programme said the British Army’s main role at the moment is defence against Vladimir Putin and the Ukraine war.
Michale O’Leary the chief executive of Ryanair proposed that the army should be drafted in to help with the chaos at UK airports for the next “three to four months.”
However Shapps was laughing at this idea and said that the “army is not a snap solution to every problem.
“Secondly, they are being deployed in increasing numbers to eastern Europe, to the Baltics, in what is a war situation and that’s what the army are principally there for.
“The airports and airlines will need to sort out this problem.
“The government will give them every support, but I don’t anticipate that will include calling in the army.
“They [the aviation industry] will need to fix this problem, we will work with them to do it, but it is on them to sort it out.”
The Mayor of London Sadiq Khan told the programme that more European workers who were previously employed in the sector before Covid hit should be allowed back to the UK to plug the gaps in the workforce.
Khan said, “What you can do very easily is make sure those who were in those jobs before, who have gone back to their country of origin, from the EU, are encouraged to come back.
“This is self-inflicted from the government. Listen, it isn’t about COVID, this is about Brexit plus COVID.”
However the Transport Secretary rejected this and said, “The answer can’t always be to reach for the lever marked ‘more immigration’.”
Shapps pointed out that there have been “exactly the same problems” in airports across the whole of Europe.
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