The National Audit Office has revealed gargantuan losses on how the UK has managed cross-border travel and Quarantine Hotels during the Covid Pandemic in a recent report.

A report from the National Audit Office (NAO) has found that the estimated cost, completed by the Department for Health and Social Care (DHSC) for running hotel quarantine service has exceeded the amount that people were charged to stay in the rooms.This has led to the taxpayer to subsidise over half of the £757 million bill to provide rooms for those travelling to the UK from high-risk or "red list" countries during the pandemic.The DHSC issued a £385 million contract to Corporate Travel Management to run the hotels.

They have told the NAO that £74 million of bills that were covering the rooms and Covid tests have not yet been paid. A further 18m has been fraudulently reclaimed in credit card chargebacks; only two cases have currently been investigated or challenged.The NAO also criticised the government's attempt to create a market for Covid testing. They commented that the DHSC had "limited oversight of the market it created, and service to the public has sometimes been poor."

They added that firms, who offered PCR tests "often marketed themselves as being government approved", and that the government listings (of at least 369 private firms whose prices ranged from £15-£525) gave "minimal assurance that they can provide the services."Furthermore, while departments monitored their individual spending on cross-border travel measures, there was no central government oversight of the total expenditure, despite costs of at least £486 million.In December 2021 it would cost a family of two adults and a child £367 per night for 11 nights when arriving from a red list country.

The fee for a single adult was £208 per night, with additional adults being charged £130 for their stay.Gareth Davies, head of the NAO, has said: "The government has had to balance many competing objectives when managing the border through the pandemic, making changes at short notice to adapt to the challenges of COVID-19"After two years of the pandemic and following the recent removal of travel restrictions, the government has an opportunity to ensure that it develops a systematic approach to managing any future travel measures, applying the learning from COVID-19.