Taxpayers spent hundreds of millions of pounds subsidising the government’s “hotel quarantine” scheme – with no certainty that it did any good.
The Independent has analysed a damning report by MPs on the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) of the government’s international travel restrictions aimed at combatting Covid-19.
The report – Managing cross-border travel during the Covid-19 pandemic – reveals apparent multi-million-pound frauds perpetrated by arrivals from red-list countries.
The all-party committee also accuses the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) of allowing UK travellers to be ripped off by unscrupulous testing organisations.
Hotel quarantine was introduced in February 2021. The controversial requirement for travellers from “red list” countries to spend 11 nights in an airport hotel remained in place for a constantly shifting cohort of countries, sometimes numbering over 50, until December 2021.
In all, 214,000 travellers paid up to £2,285 each towards their stay. But the average cost was £3,537 – leaving a total shortfall of £329m to be met by the taxpayer, or over £1m daily.
DHSC sources say that towards the end of the scheme very few travellers were in hotel quarantine, raising the average cost significantly.
The committee also says: “DHSC failed to adequately protect the taxpayer from fraud in the Managed Quarantine Service (MQS), and is not pursuing the fraud that it has identified vigorously enough.
“There was substantial fraud against the MQS programme. At 1 March 2022, DHSC was owed £74 million in unpaid bills. This includes £21 million of refunds issued but DHSC does not know how much of these were fraudulent.”
A number of people who were in hotel quarantine later secured “chargeback” refunds from their credit card companies, who in turn claimed the money back from the government.
The Independent understands that cases where a booking was subject to a chargeback have been referred to Qualco, DHSC’s debt collection agency – though sources said that where fraud has involved travellers based abroad, it may not be possible to recover the funds.
Between February and September 2021 people could self-certify that they were suffering financial hardship to avoid paying upfront for hotel quarantine.
The report says: “DHSC also does not know to what extent its system for claiming financial hardship was abused.
“By May 2022, DHSC has recovered, or has plans to recover, £20m of £54m of debt from people…
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