Coronavirus restrictions on international travel were imposed with no overall assessment of their impact. There was no system to gauge the success of measures such as the traffic light system, self-isolation, testing, quarantine hotels or passenger locator forms, a National Audit Office report said.
The watchdog found there was a failure to track the cost of travel rules in England, despite at least £486 million of taxpayers' money being spent on implementing them during the 2021/22 financial year. It also described the impact of the pandemic on the travel industry in terms of lost revenue as "significant".
Paul Charles, chief executive of travel consultancy The PC Agency, which campaigned against many of the travel rules, said the NAO's report "highlights a catalogue of failures". He continued: "It is now clear that there was no joined-up thinking between departments on cross-border travel policies and that no consideration was given to the cost to the taxpayer of introducing a raft of hare-brained measures.
"The Government severely damaged a world class sector and destroyed tens of thousands of jobs over a two-year period. It has many lessons to learn about the way it handles such an event in future."
All restrictions were dropped on March 18, but the report demanded the UK Government learns lessons in case they need to be reintroduced. Gareth Davies, head of the NAO, said: "The Government has had to balance many competing objectives when managing the border through the pandemic, making changes at short notice to adapt to the challenges of Covid-19.
"After two years of the pandemic, the Government has an opportunity to ensure that it develops a systematic approach to managing any future travel measures, applying the learning from Covid-19."
England's regulations covering international travel changed at least 10 times between February 2021 and January 2022, the NAO found. Ministerial committees took policy decisions which were implemented by Government departments, such as:
- The Department for Health and Social Care: Responsible for rules on quarantine and testing, including quarantine hotels.
- The Home Office: Responsible for implementing checks at the border.
- The Department for Transport: Created the traffic light system which categorised destinations based on risk.
- The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office: Provided travel advice to British nationals.
The report stated that measures were implemented without formalised system-wide mechanisms to help it adapt its approach, monitor effectiveness, learn lessons and check that changes were being made consistently."
Labour MP Meg Hillier, chair of the Commons' Public Accounts Committee, described the handling of travel rules as "more reactive than proactive" - creating a "confusing mishmash of different parts and programmes."
She went on: "Poor communication meant the public were often bewildered by the travel advice. Monitoring those entering the country relied on goodwill, rather than good data. Government never really got a handle on the numbers, nor whether its border measures were working effectively.
"Over two years since the pandemic began, Government has still not got its house in order."
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