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.
