Appearing on the show on Thursday morning (28 May), Hancock said he was "a bit more optimistic about being able to get some foreign travel back up".

It comes after Hancock told the very same show just a fortnight ago on 12 May it was unlikely "big, lavish international holidays" would be possible this summer.

Pressing Hancock on his previous comments, and easyJet’s announcement on Thursday it is planning to cut its workforce by up to 30%, presenter Eamonn Holmes asked whether it was time for the government to revisit or rethink its 14-day quarantine on arrival plans.

"The rules on quarantine on international travel are important and they’ll be coming in in just over a week’s time," Hancock insisted in reply, stressing he and the government recognised the "massive impact" of the coronavirus crisis on airlines and their staff.

However, he added: "I am a little bit more optimistic than I was about being able to get some foreign travel back up, that is one of things where things have gone a bit better than expected."

Holmes’s fellow presenter Ruth Langsford said the two-week quarantine on return requirement was putting people off getting on planes to Spain, Portugal and Greece, and asked Hancock if it was something the government was "maybe having second thoughts about".

"We’re going to bring it [quarantine] in on 8 June," said Hancock. "We’ll keep that under review so in the same way there is a three-weekly review of the overall lockdown measures. But it is important, and especially now that the number of new infections is much lower than it was at the peak, it means those coming from abroad are a bigger proportion of the overall infections so the quarantine rules are important."

Holmes though pushed Hancock further on holidays, asking whether it was now "not out of the question for people to hope and have their fingers crossed about a July foreign holiday?".

"I absolutely wouldn’t rule it out," said Hancock. "But we’ve got to proceed cautiously. We’ve seen what happens when this virus gets out of control. We’ll proceed cautiously and carefully, but I definitely wouldn’t say no, and I know how important it [a holiday] is for so many people."