The government does not know whether almost £500 million spent on traffic light travel restrictions imposed during the pandemic worked.
The accusation came from MPs on the public accounts committee (PAC), which also questioned whether the the cost of the system was worth the disruption caused.
A report into managing cross-border travel during the pandemic found that ministers changed the rules at least ten times between February 2021 and January 2022, but gave the travel industry little time to adapt its operations for those changes.
The PAC said: “It is, therefore, unsurprising that some 40% of people did not understand the self-isolation requirements after travel.
“The government relied on private sector companies (‘carriers’) to implement checks on additional health documentation, and on the public to understand and comply with what was required of them.
“Despite this key role and the costs incurred, government gave carriers no specific additional support. It also did not clearly communicate changes to the measures to either carriers or the public.”
The report said: “Despite spending at least £486 million on implementing its traffic light system to manage travel during the pandemic, government did not track its spending on managing cross-border travel or set clear objectives, so does not know whether the system worked or whether the cost was worth the disruption caused. Similarly, its failure to develop good data to inform its decisions means it does not know the impact on public health of granting 2.5 million exemptions from parts of the system.”
The report also calculated that taxpayers ended up subsidising almost half of the £757 million cost of the quarantine service which was meant to be self-funding.
The committee said that “the taxpayer has ended up subsidising £329 million, almost half the bill, with the rest passed to people travelling. This was despite increasing the cost to individuals to more than £2,200 for a single adult over ten days in August 2021.”
Taxpayers were also not “adequately protected” from fraud against the managed quarantine service, with the Department for Health and Social Care owed £74 million in unpaid bills as of March 1 this year.
“This includes £21 million of refunds issued but DHSC does not know how much of these were fraudulent and how much was from people who were not satisfied with the service they had paid for. DHSC has only investigated two cases of fraud and has shown limited interest in pursuing more, citing the small amount of money involved in individual cases,” according to the PAC
The report added: “Managing cross-border travel was an essential part of health measures introduced by government during the pandemic.
“Despite spending at least £486 million on implementing its traffic light system to manage travel during the pandemic, government did not track its spending on managing cross-border travel or set clear objectives, so does not know whether the system worked or whether the cost was worth the disruption caused.
“Similarly, its failure to develop good data to inform its decisions means it does not know the impact on public health of granting 2.5 million exemptions from parts of the system.
“People travelling found the rules difficult to understand, and 40% of people did not know the rules on self-isolation.”
Airlines were legally responsible for checking that everyone travelling to the UK had submitted a Passenger Locator Form recording their contact information and recent travel history.
But this imposed extra costs on carriers in a period where their revenue had fallen dramatically, the committee found.
“Although government provided access to up to £8 billion of financial support during the pandemic, this was mostly general support from the furlough scheme. It did not provide any additional financial support to carriers to implement the travel controls it introduced.
“Despite government’s reliance on carriers, it gave them given short notice of changes to the rules and requirements to adapt their operations.
“Government sometimes did not provide carriers with sufficient notice ahead of public statements that the travel rules were changing because they were concerned about leaks, but details appeared in the media anyway.”
The report concluded: “Departments have failed to protect the taxpayer, and the public, from the risk of fraud and poor quality of service from providers of Covid-19 tests for people travelling to the UK, or to vigorously pursue the fraud that has occurred.
“As we have repeatedly observed, it is essential that [government] departments learn lessons in order to manage effectively large cross-government portfolios in future and respond to any future emergencies.”
PAC chair, Labour MP Meg Hillier, told The Telegraph:“ Certainty is the key thing. Not knowing what you are planning for, and extra hoops that you had to put people through…it was this flip-flopping that was the problem.
“They didn’t seem to have a strategy, it was [all] a bit of knee-jerk reaction.”
A government spokesperson said: “The pandemic was an unprecedented challenge and we acted swiftly and decisively to implement policies designed to safe lives and protect the NHS from being overwhelmed.
“Considerable efforts were made across government to put border measures in place that helped protect the UK from arriving cases of Covid-19, buying vital time for our domestic response to new and concerning variants.”