Senior UK officials joked about air travellers being held in prison-like “shoe boxes” under Covid-19 quarantine rules, leaked texts have revealed.
Simon Case, Britain's top civil servant, asked Matt Hancock, health secretary at the time, how many people had been “locked up in hotels” in February 2021.
Mr Hancock cheered on Border Force checks on passengers and called for prison sentences for people cheating the system.
The texts are part of a trove of WhatsApp messages handed to The Daily Telegraph by Mr Hancock's former ghost writer Isabel Oakeshott.
They suggest grumbles by passengers who compared their quarantine hotels to “HM Prison Heathrow” were not out of step with how officials saw the system.
People arriving from “red list” countries were required to spend 10 days in government-run hotels at their own expense.
In February 2021, the government introduced a threat that people who tried to conceal a stay in a red list country could face 10 years in prison or a £10,000 ($11,980) fine.
That month, Mr Hancock remarked to Mr Case that the hotels were “giving big families all the suites and putting pop stars in the box rooms”.
Mr Case replied: “I just want to see some of the faces of people coming out of first class and into a Premier Inn shoe box.”
In another exchange, Mr Case inquired about “how many people we locked up in hotels yesterday”.
Mr Hancock said: “None. But 149 chose to enter the country and are now in quarantine hotels due to their own free will”.
“Hilarious,” replied Mr Case.
The texts suggest Mr Hancock was determined to close loopholes at the UK border as the government tried to keep out new Covid-19 variants.
In January 2021, Mr Hancock said passenger locator forms should be mandatory and called for prison sentences for people who lied or wrote joke entries such as “Mickey Mouse”.
On one occasion, he sent a news story about passengers being questioned by police to Priti Patel, home secretary at the time, with the comment: “BRILLIANT”.
Willie Walsh, a former head of British Airways, told the Telegraph the government's scientific response to Covid-19 had become politicised.
"The messages between Matt Hancock and Simon Case making light of travel lockdowns and the economic collapse of the airline industry reveal a breathtaking contempt for travellers and aviation workers," he said.
Ms Patel, likewise, favoured tough enforcement. When Mr Hancock shared a story about a woman being jailed for coughing at police, she commented: “Law and order!”
She said her favourite example was of passengers being denied boarding on a Eurostar train to France because of their very obvious ski equipment.
Yet another example involved two people fined £10,000 each for failing to quarantine after a trip to Dubai. When Mr Hancock reported it to Boris Johnson, prime minister at the time, he replied: “Superb”.
The UK's travel restrictions and passenger locator forms were abolished in March 2022.
Downing Street has said it is for a public inquiry to consider the evidence and declined to comment on specific claims in the leaks.
The texts revealed Mr Hancock's struggles to keep the virus out of care homes and to persuade colleagues to keep schools closed.
He resigned in June 2021 after it was revealed he had broken social distancing rules by kissing an aide with whom he was having an affair.
Mr Hancock said on Wednesday he was “hugely disappointed and sad” at what he called a “massive betrayal and breach of trust by Isabel Oakeshott”.
Ms Oakeshott said the leak was in the public interest because of the vast impact of the government's decisions.
