Foreign holidays have been given the green light after ministers confirmed the requirement to self-isolate for 14 days upon returning to the UK will be scrapped for a slew of popular destinations.

Trips to France, Greece and Spain look on the cards after the Government confirmed it will revise the quarantine measures next week.

In place of the quarantine arrangements will be a traffic light system, with officials placing countries into green, amber and red categories based on the prevalence of coronavirus within each nation’s borders.

Only passengers arriving into the UK from nations in the red category, where the spread of coronavirus is deemed to be high, will be told to self-isolate for two weeks, under the fresh proposals.

Ministers have warned countries could fall into the unsafe category if there are sudden outbreaks, meaning holidaymakers could return to find they unexpectedly have to lock themselves away for 14 days.

Travellers, no matter which country they are coming from, will still have to hand over to the Border Force the address they plan to reside at on their return, as part of the plans.

A Government spokeswoman said: “Our new risk-assessment system will enable us to carefully open a number of safe travel routes around the world – giving people the opportunity for a summer holiday abroad and boosting the UK economy through tourism and business.

“But we will not hesitate to put on the brakes if any risks re-emerge, and this system will enable us to take swift action to reintroduce self-isolation measures if new outbreaks occur overseas.”

The quarantine measures have come in for heavy criticism since they were brought in this month.

Since June 8, all passengers – bar a handful of exemptions – have been required to go into self-isolation for a fortnight at a declared address when they arrive in the UK.