In a damning report issued on Tuesday (26 July), parliament’s public accounts committee said despite spending "at least £486 million" on implementing the scheme, government still "does not know whether the system worked or whether the cost was worth the disruption caused".

The committee highlighted, in particular, the impact on travel, noting how government-imposed travel rules changed more than 10 times between February 2021 and January 2022 "giving the travel industry little time to react".

MPs were also critical of the government’s reliance on the private sector, such as airports and airlines, to implement "key" checks on additional Covid-era health documentation while expecting them to foot the bill without "specific additional support".

Elsewhere, little thought was given to helping the public understand what was required of them, and changes were not clearly communicated to carriers or the public to such an extent that only about 40% of people were aware of the rules on self-isolation, the report said.

Among a catalogue of criticisms, the committee also highlighted how government failed to monitor the impact on public health of an estimated 2.5 million exemptions from the rules, and how many of these people tested positive for Covid-19.

"In not setting out the reasons for exemptions for those attending Euro 2020 and London Fashion Week, government risked undermining people’s willingness to comply with rules," said the committee.

Taxpayers subsidised £329 million of the total £757 million cost of hotel quarantine, despite it supposed to have been self-funding with fees passed on to travellers at a cost of £2,200 per adult in August 2021. Just 2% of hotel quarantine guests tested positive.

The committee also criticised the Department of Health for failing to properly set up a market for travel tests, which it said "put the public at risk of fraud and poor quality service”.

’Millions of taxpayers’ money blown’

Dame Meg Hillier MP, chair of the public accounts committee, said: “The approach to border controls and quarantine caused huge confusion and disruption with 10 changes in a year. And now we can see it is not clear what this achieved.

"We can be clear on one thing – the cost to the taxpayer in subsidising expensive quarantine hotels, and more millions of taxpayers’ money blown on measures with no apparent plan or reasoning and precious few checks or proof that it was working to protect public health.

"We don’t have time and it is not enough for government to feed these failures into its delayed public inquiry – it is not learning lessons fast enough from the pandemic and is missing opportunities to react quickly to future emergencies or even current events like new variants of Covid or the spread of Monkeypox."

Abta chief executive Mark Tanzer said: “The UK’s restrictions throughout the pandemic brought travel to a standstill, hundreds of thousands of people lost their jobs and livelihoods, and the industry is still feeling the effects of these policies.

“Protecting public health is the ultimate priority when in a pandemic but the measures put in place need to be backed up by evidence and proportionate to the risk. It’s important government learns the lessons from the last couple of years and has a sensible and evidence-based approach to dealing with any future variants or pandemics, and has a system of financial support in place for businesses.”

’Kick in the teeth’

Pilots union Balpa tweeted: We can only forgive the government for these poor decisions – pointed out by the entire industry at the time – if they now make good on the promise to leave a legacy of learning and wisdom for the Government which has to deal with the next pandemic.

"We must ensure decisions are evidence based and that we never again jump to populist decisions that harm us economically with no real benefit to public health."

Advantage Travel Partnership chief executive Julia Lo Bue-Said described the report’s findings as a "kick in the teeth for everyone connected to the travel industry. "Many businesses continue to face hardship due to shambolic travel measures [and] inadequate support, particularly travel agents and travellers who were ripped off for no good reason," she added.