Hello and thanks for joining me. I'm Simon Calder. It's Sunday the 27th of June and I'm in beautiful Green Park in London, just looking out across to Buckingham Palace and bringing you the latest on travel and destinations from the Green List and the travel desk of the Independent.

Today, could a new health secretary change the way that travel opens up?

The Boeing 737 Max is back and starting operations for the summer,

and in central London, the elephants have landed.

Of course, this podcast is completely free, as is my weekly

travel email. You can sign up at independent.co.uk forward slash newsletters. Well, in the UK,

it has been an interesting few days. On Saturday evening we learnt that the Health Secretary Matt Hancock

had resigned after interesting sequence of newspaper revelations about his private life.

And on that subject my thoughts very much are with the families

involved. The new Secretary of State for Health is Sajjee Javid and I wonder whether

this could actually signal a faster opening up of travel.

Let me explain, if I may.

Every three weeks, there is a meeting of senior cabinet ministers, including the health

secretary, the chancellor, the cabinet secretary, Michael Gove, the Home Secretary, Priti Patel, and the Transport

Secretary Grant Shaps. What normally happens, I imagine, and I've not been in any of these meetings,

so please bear in mind this is pure speculation, is that Grant Shaps, with some backing from Rishi

Sunak, the Chancellor, says,

oh, it'd be great if we could open up a few more places and then the destruction of the

travel industry that COVID began and we have continued might start to abate and we might even start building something of

the summer. And every three weeks, the health secretary, Matt Hancock, says approximately,

I am completely focused on getting rid of COVID. If we let people come in from other countries, we run the risk

of new variants, more cases, it will be a disaster. And effectively, he wins the day. Now,

...