Senior Conservative backbenchers say Passenger Locator Forms are redundant now all domestic COVID restrictions have been lifted.

They say the forms and testing for unvaccinated arrivals to the UK should be dropped before the Easter holidays.

Transport Secretary Grant Shapps has already promised the form will be simplified so it will take an average of eight minutes to fill out, four minutes less than it does now, according to a report in The Telegraph.

But Huw Merriman, Conservative Chair of the Commons Transport Committee, is leading calls for the ‘cumbersome and instrusive’ form to be ditched.

He said that to leave it in place ‘has absolutely no logic’ and warned that ‘it’s a drain on international travel’.

Chair of the 1922 Tory backbench committee Sir Graham Brady pointed out that ‘most other countries’ have already simplified their forms, or scrapped them altogether.

Henry Smith, Tory chair of the all party Future of Aviation group, has joined the lobby for the form to be withdrawn before Easter. “The PLF is time consuming and confusing for many, additionally it can lead to delays at the UK border,” he said.

The PLF was introduced as a way for the Government to track unvaccinated arrivals, who are still obliged to take a COVID test, but airlines are also calling for all passenger testing to be scrapped.

Airlines UK Chief Executive Tim Alderslade told The Telegraph: “You don’t need a form to order a table in a restaurant or buy a drink, whether you’ve been vaccinated or not, so why should they be required for travel. What’s the difference, in the age of Omicron?”