Ex-BA commercial director Robert Boyle, who now runs GridPoint Consulting, said the red list was only designed to work in countries with “Covid-zero” strategies like Australia and New Zealand.

“If the red list was abolished completely and only amber and green were retained, the UK’s border controls would still be more restrictive than Germany’s are today,” he said, adding the number of UK red-listed countries “seems excessive”.

Boyle said there was a logic for the red list in countries where there was a high risk of a dangerous new variant emerging. 

“But do we really think that by the time we found out about such a variant, it wouldn’t already have got to the UK via a third country which doesn’t have such draconian travel restrictions?”

Writing in a blog, he said that until a new variant emerged, the role for the red list should be for countries where infection rates are known to be very high or could be very high and which have poor sequencing data. 

“Thailand and Montenegro were recently added to the red list with exactly that justification.”

He added: “Maybe the red list made sense when it was established. But like many Covid policies that were put in place at the height of the crisis, it is looking increasingly like something that should now be dismantled, or at least put into standby mode to be reactivated if a new scary variant is discovered before it has already arrived in the UK.”