Shapps comments came during a BBC Breakfast interview on Wednesday (13 May), and appeared to support health secretary Matt Hancock’s stance, set out in a This Morning interview on Tuesday (12 May), that overseas holidays were "unlikely" this summer.

Pressed on whether he felt Tui chief executive Fritz Joussen’s vow that summer holidays were possible this year with "clear rules and safety measures" went against the health secretary’s comments, Shapps said it was important to "accept the situation" the country was in.

"Well no-one wants to ruin people’s holidays," he said. "But we have to accept the situation we’re actually in at this moment in time, which is within this country you can’t go somewhere and stay overnight in a different location. The Foreign and Commonwealth Office advises against all travel abroad so you can’t go and do that so right now, you can’t book those things.

"The fastest way to getting back to normality is to very closely follow the rules that are being set out. It’s quite hard to know what the path will be with this disease, but we do know what the rules are right now – and you can’t book."

Shapps continued: "People will just have to take a view on where we will be at some point in the future. We’ve set out where we hope to be, but we don’t know whether the virus will respond as we hope. It depends how closely people adhere to the rules.

"Of course we’re all desperate to get the world back to normal and be able to go about our lives, go on holiday and all the rest of it, but we can only do that in small steps. I think when Matt Hancock commented on this yesterday he was pointing out the obvious which is right now, the Foreign Office advice is against foreign travel."

Pushed on whether people should or shouldn’t book trips, Shapps added: "I’m saying right now, you can’t travel abroad. If you are booking it, then you are clearly by very nature taking a chance of where the direction of this virus goes, and therefore where the travel advice is in the future. That’s not something people would want to take lightly, of course."

On the government’s proposed 14-day quarantine for UK arrivals, and asked to justify the measures and how it "follows the science", Shapps added: "At the beginning, I asked the chief medical officer: ’Should we be closing the borders?’ His very straightforward advice was no, it wouldn’t stop this virus from coming in, we already had it here, it wouldn’t have actually achieved anything.

"The difference is, as we get that R number down, the number of people who are infected, then it does become significant to prevent it [the virus] from coming back in. Of course now, with all the testing that’s available which just simply wasn’t something this country had right at the beginning of this, it does mean we are much more capable of being able to track and trace.

"So it will make sense, and I don’t think we can ask the British people to continue to obey some very strict rules but then say anyone can come here and just move around, that wouldn’t be right, so we’ve got to get that balance right. And the simple answer is, what we’re doing is based on the best medical advice we have available."

Shapps was lambasted by senior figures throughout the travel sector last month for his comments on taking a summer holiday.

Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s Today programme about a possible resumption of activity after the UK lockdown, Shapps said: “I won’t be booking a summer holiday at this point, let’s put it that way.”