Covid travel tests can cost more than five times the price of a return flight to Europe, it emerged last night.

It leaves families paying hundreds of pounds extra to go abroad this summer with MPs branding the expense ‘a rip-off’.

Ministers face increasing pressure to cap how much travellers pay for PCR tests and scrap VAT on them to stop would-be holidaymakers from being priced out of foreign breaks.

A study by MPs looked at the cost of trips to popular European destinations later this month and compared them with the average fee for a single PCR swab after getting back to Britain.

It found Ryanair was offering return flights from East Midlands airport to Barcelona and Exeter to Alicante for just £18 between August 24 and 27.

But the typical charge for a post-return PCR test among Government-approved providers is £93 – some five times as expensive. The swab is also almost four times as costly as a return flight from London Stansted to Madrid.

And for destinations such as Berlin, Budapest and Faro in the Algarve, the test is more than double the price of plane tickets.

The research only includes the cost of a single post-return PCR swab, which double-jabbed travellers must take by day two after returning from a green or amber country.

It does not include the pre-return swab all passengers must take before boarding UK-bound planes, meaning testing bills as a proportion of flight costs can be even greater. Non-fully vaccinated holidaymakers also face much larger bills as they are required to take two post-return PCR swabs on days two and eight.