It comes at the same time as furlough support begins to wind down, which described as "short-sighted" by Abta chief Mark Tanzer last week.

More than £75 billion has been borrowed by businesses throughout the pandemic through Covid loan schemes, the majority coming in the form of bounce back loans taken up by around 1.5 million firms.

The UK government has, in recent weeks, disclosed the names of "tens of thousands" of businesses with new debt to an EU website, which the FT said owed to the union’s rules on disclosing state aid.

However, the government has extended a commercial rents moratorium and a ban on Covid-related winding up orders. HMRC has also pledged to "take a sympathetic approach" to unpaid taxes, the FT reports.

Yet according to the FT, bankers have been "raising the alarm" with government officials about a potential "debt time bomb".

Mike Cherry, national chair of the Federation of Small Businesses, told the FT that 1 July had come as a "economic flashpoint" with furlough starting to be wound down.