Thomas Cook Group reported the huge rise in holiday illness claims – many of them false – over the past year to have impacted its margins, accounting for one third of the business saw a drop in earnings for the UK, alongside bed costs and foreign exchange issues.

Underlying Ebit (earnings before interest and taxes) declined by £34 million compared to last year.

Chief executive Peter Fankhauser said: “We see [there being] a massive drop in claims. All of what we have done to prevent this fraud is going to have an impact.

“We don’t expect that we’re going to have the same this year as we had last year.

“But there’s still a way to go and we are very strict. We need to government change of the rules here urgently.

“We need a legal base that we don’t have to battle ourselves – that the government is helping us to prevent this fraud.”

Fankhauser added that Cook had received no fake sickness claims in Germany. “It’s not even a problem in all the other markets,” he said.

“In the UK I’m confident it’s going to normalise.”