It was announced today that international travellers could face spot checks and £1,000 fines if they fail to self-isolate for 14 days after arriving in the UK under measures to guard against a second wave of coronavirus.

Speaking at the daily Downing Street briefing Ms Patel said she was imposing quarantine plans from June 8 for new arrivals at the time “it will be the most effective”.

But Nick Thomas-Symonds, Labour’s Shadow Home Secretary, said although the opposition supported the plans, they should have been put in place sooner.

He said: “The Government’s handling of arrivals into the UK has lacked urgency, coherence and clarity from the outset. If quarantine is needed, it should not have taken so long for measures to be introduced. Too little thought has been given to testing and screening at airports. Far greater transparency is needed and the scientific evidence underpinning this decision should be made public.”

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Ms Patel said: “The answer as to why we’re bringing in these measures now is simple: It is to protect that hard-won progress and prevent a devastating resurgence in a second wave of the virus.

“As we are taking this action, we are taking it at a time that it will be the most effective.”

She said that passenger arrivals have been down 99 per cent compared to the previous year but now the peak has passed, steps to “guard against imported cases” must be imposed.

Paul Lincoln, Border Force director general, said spot checks would be carried out on the accuracy of quarantine forms of those arriving into the UK from abroad.

He said: “At the border there will be spot checks conducted by Border Force officers.

“Any obvious errors will trigger a requirement for the passenger to complete another form or potentially be refused entry into the UK.”

He said the Border Force expected most people to comply with the measures but the agency was ready to act in cases where the rules were not followed.

“Given the high levels of compliance to date, we expect the vast majority of people will take this seriously and do the right thing,” he said.

The plans came under criticism from the airline industry and from within the Conservative party.

A Ryanair spokeswoman said: “Ryanair is strongly opposed to ineffective non-scientific measures such as the UK’s ‘quarantine’, which is completely unenforceable.

“Once these arriving passengers have travelled on the crowded London Underground, or the Heathrow and Gatwick Express, or buses or taxis to their destination, the subsequent quarantine is pointless.”

Earlier, the chief executive of the Airport Operators Association, Karen Dee, told the Commons home affairs committee that drastic reductions in passengers “may simply lead to a prolonged shutdown of all aviation”.

The Airlines UK trade body said thousands of jobs and the economy’s recovery would be jeopardised by the plan, and called for ministers to carry out “robust, transparent and evidence-led” reviews every three weeks.

Chief executive Tim Alderslade said: “Introducing a quarantine at this stage makes no sense and will mean very limited international aviation at best.

“It is just about the worst thing Government could do if their aim is to restart the economy.”

And earlier in the day, Haltemprice and Howden MP David Davis described the timing as "odd".

“Everything we do in this has got a balance really,” Mr Davis told the BBC’s World at One programme.

“A balance principally in this case between medical issues, health issues, the economy and social issues.

“And the thing that worries me is how carefully this has been thought through. Remember at the beginning this was supposed to exempt France, one of the other highest infection countries in Europe.

“The timing is odd. I mean, other countries like Greece introduced pretty much quarantine arrangements very, very early on and as a result, Greece is 30 times better off in deaths per million than we are.

“And we’re now in a position where we’re going to say, let’s say Greeks, coming here, ‘well you’re going to have to have 14 days in quarantine’, whereas if I come down from Doncaster, I go through King’s Cross without a stop.

“So it’s very, very difficult to see how this is actually quite as effective or cost-effective or balanced as well with the impact it’s going to have as a lot of other measures.”

Mr Davis added: “Ask yourself – where is the science in saying to somebody from Athens which has got a very low rate or any part of Greece that’s got a low rate, versus someone from Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds or wherever.

“I mean the rates here are much higher than they are in Greece, so I don’t see how it adds up.”

But Ms Patel Patel insisted ministers were introducing the quarantine measures at the right time.

She said: “This is now about managing the risk of transmission being reintroduced from elsewhere. So that’s really vital and that’s why we’re bringing the measures in now, we want to reduce the risk of imported cases being introduced into the UK.”

Home Office chief scientific adviser Professor John Aston said: “The scientific advice so far has been clear: while there has been significant community transmission of the virus within the UK, the impact of putting in place additional border restrictions would have been negligible to the spread of the virus.

“However, the spread of the virus within the UK is now lessening. We have been successful in getting the reproduction number R – the average number of new people infected by one infected person – below 1.

“As the number of infections within the UK drops, we must now manage the risk of transmissions being reintroduced from elsewhere.”

The Home Office said arrivals would be encouraged to download the NHS contact tracing app at the border “once rolled out nationally”.

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Government accused of being too slow to quarantine international travellers