A spokesman for Heathrow said that the airport had been trialling the testing process, which involves placing litmus paper in the liquid under test, since January. “We have been running the trial as if the DfT’s (UK Department for Transport) rules had already been implemented. We are already geared up for testing and there should not be any impact on passengers.”

In a letter leaked on a pilots’ discussion forum, the DfT told airports: “It is anticipated that this introduction will cause inconvenience to customers, airport staff and crew travelling through UK airports and will potentially impact the speed of security processing.”

Commentary from the Times reporter: 

I’m not against reasonable security but this seems to be going too far. Next thing we know we’ll all be having to get to the airport four or five hours in advance to go through all these different security checks.

The DfT should listen to the concerns of regular travellers and not take disproportionate measures that will do little to catch real terrorists who must, by now, have realised that there are far easier targets.