Recommendation 10

From February 2021, until all travel measures were withdrawn in March 2022, private sector carriers were legally responsible for some additional document checks required as part of the travel measures. Border Force told us that the administration of some measures, notably the checking of Passenger Locator Forms, fell on the travel industry as government relied upon carriers to perform checks. It told us that it was much easier for the carriers 11 Qq 104–5, C&AG’s report paras 2.22, 2.24 12 Qq 104, 107, 109 13 Q 141; C&AG’s report paras 17, 3.11–3.14 14 Q 143; C&AG’s Report para 17 15 Qq 142–144 12 Managing cross-border travel during the COVID-19 pandemic to perform these checks as passenger numbers increased.16 Carriers told the NAO that these measures created significant costs for their sector at a time when their revenue had already reduced due to depressed travel volumes and that checks added significant time to boarding passengers. Air passenger numbers fell to 1% of 2019 levels in April 2020 and Home Office figures published in February 2022 showed that passenger numbers had still not returned to pre-pandemic levels by December 2021.17