Passport eGates across the UK were affected by the outage, which began on Friday night (26 May) and wasn’t resolved until Saturday evening (27 May).

Major queues were reported at several of the UK’s largest airports, including Heathrow, Manchester and Gatwick, after Border Force officials were forced to resort to manual checks.

The BBC reports the fault as being down to an "IT issue". The Home Office tweeted Saturday lunchtime it was aware of a "technical nationwide border system issue".

It confirmed shortly after 6pm on Saturday all eGates were now operating as normal. "We thank those travellers who were impacted for their patience and staff for their work in resolving the issue."

Which? Travel editor Rory Boland described the "chaotic scenes" at airports and ports across the country as "unacceptable", adding there should be consequences for continued poor service.

The issue was compounded by a failure of France’s passport system on Saturday, which impact departures from the Port of Dover.