Treasury Minister Alfred Cannan says there will be no ’magic solution’ to the island’s borders restrictions and it could be months before they fully open.

The Ayre and Michael MHK insisted the government is going to continue taking a ’cautious approach’ over frontier limitations.

And he accepted that whether there is a thumbs up or thumbs down for next year’s TT would be a ’critical decision’ that will need to be made at some point.

Talking about the border Mr Cannan said: ’We have to adjust ourselves to the fact that there is unlikely to be a really significant change in the position until possibly the spring and maybe even the summer.’

He said it was important to ’push forward in a sensible and measured way and have sensible and measured discussions’.

Mr Cannan added: ’There will not be a magic solution before spring and then we will have to make further decisions depending on what the international situation is.’

He was speaking at an Isle of Man Examiner Topical Talks business roundtable with senior executives.

It took place shortly before new emergency measures were brought in by the UK government as the number of coronavirus cases started going up again.

The island remains at level four status over the border and this was strongly underlined by Chief Minister Howard Quayle MHK at a news briefing with health minister David Ashford MHK.

Mr Quayle said the situation in the UK ’is not developing as any of us would have hoped’.

He added: ’Given the resurgence of the virus and the potential for this to build into a fully-fledged second wave we have to be realistic about the the threat to the island.’

The Chief Minister said the time was not right to move from level 4 to level 3 of our border restrictions - but nor was there any intention to move back up to the full border closure of level 5. Mr Quayle said currently ’there are no signs whatsoever that the virus is circulating in our community and the Isle of Man therefore remains free of coronavirus’.

During the roundtable gathering Mr Cannan said: ’For the time being I think we should take a cautious approach until we get to a position whereby either globally the position has changed fundamentally or there has been a significant development in the next six months or so, such as a vaccine or a significant advance that means there is a drug available that really reduces the impact.’

He said he fully supports ’small steps’ because of the ’potential for people to get seriously ill from this disease’.

Business leaders taking part in the roundtable were broadly supportive of the approach taken by the government during the Covid-19 crisis.

Greg Ellison, chief executive of Capital International told Mr Cannan: ’I think you all did a great job. There is no rule book, no handbook over this.’

Shipping businessman Lars Ugland, who was this year appointed chairman of the Steam Packet Company, sounded a note of caution by saying: ’To get more business to the island we have to open the borders again. I think that the government has done really well in controlling the situation but how long can we go on for before opening the borders again?’

The Treasury Minister also spoke for the first time about the ’huge pressure’ he and other senior government ministers faced this year.

Mr Cannan is expected to release more details later this week about the progress of the government’s Economic Recovery Programme.

The Economic Recovery Programme is a cross-government piece of work to stimulate the island’s economy following the coronavirus pandemic and follows the Treasury Minister’s announcement in July’s Tynwald sitting that he would be creating a £100million Economic Recovery Fund to enable the island’s economic response to Covid-19.

The programme aims to protect jobs, stabilise our economy and invest in the island’s future.

You can read the roundtable report in today’s Business News inside this paper.