Mr Howe said things were back to “business as normal” but remained “on a knife edge” with not much needed to create congestion.

He told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme the coming weekend was expected to be the second busiest getaway weekend of the summer holidays and, with traffic crossing the Channel back to pre-pandemic levels and additional checks at the border since the UK left the European Union, it took “very little to cause those tailbacks”.

He said on Friday the Port of Dover had issues with a lack of resources, which was compounded by a crash on the motorway.

“You only need another crash on the road or maybe a train breakdown or a power failure somewhere for it to then become a big problem.”

Mr Howe said there needed to be more infrastructure in place to take traffic off the roads, such as lorry parks.

“We shouldn’t really have to have queues of traffic due to all of this, so we need more infrastructure in place,” he said.

John Keefe, director of public affairs for Getlink – which operates the Eurotunnel between Folkestone and Calais, said the issue over the weekend had been caused by the expected “very heavy traffic of passengers” getting away on holidays alongside an unexpected amount of truck traffic, which would normally have crossed to France earlier but had been delayed by an accident on the motorway.

He said there were several factors that could help ease the situation, including bringing in digital technology to speed up border checks, increasing the resilience of the road network – with two of the UK’s biggest ports served by the same motorway – and improving the Channel tunnel railway network.