Travellers arriving in the UK took around 500,000 tests in the three weeks beginning 1 July said chair of the transport select committee, Huw Merriman MP, citing data from NHS Test and Trace.

However, while nearly 7,000 of these tests were positive, only 354 were genomically sequenced – around 5%.

Merriman said passengers spend around £35 million on PCR tests during that specific three-week period, meaning each sequenced test cost £100,000.

The government is continuing to insist, as recently as its Wednesday traffic light update (4 August), that sequencing was vital to guarding new Covid-19 variants arriving in the UK.

Travellers arriving in the UK from Spain are now being recommended to take a pre-departure PCR test as well as a day two PCR test so these can be sequenced, purportedly to detect instances of the Beta variant of Covid-10 as well as another variant the government said was circulating in Spain.

Merriman branded the cost of PCR testing for international travellers an "unnecessary rip-off". He reiterated his call for PCR testing for arrivals to be replaced by cheaper antigen tests, with PCR only being required where an antigen test comes back positive.

"Based on these figures, this would be cheaper for passengers and would also lead to more sequencing," said Merriman in a string of tweets posted on Wednesday evening after the government’s 10pm traffic light update.

"Passengers are being ripped off with expensive PCR tests. We are told this is justified to sequence for variants, but only 5% of tests are. This barrier to affordable travel needs to stop now."