There are no excuses for the Gatwick chaos. Ministers and the airport authorities have had ample warnings about the dangers that drones could present to passenger aircraft.

In October 2016, in my review of London’s Preparedness to Respond to a Major Terrorist Incident, I highlighted the potential for drones – either accidentally or with malicious intent – to disrupt flights.

I was by no means the first. The year before, a House of Lords committee issued similar warnings, as had academics, technical experts and airline pilots.

A few months ago the government finally made it illegal to fly a drone above 400 feet or within a kilometre of an airport. This was too little, too late and the penalties nothing like sufficient to stop those responsible from creating havoc with the holiday plans of thousands of families last week.

Most people believe the exclusion zone should have been five kilometres. However, whatever the law may say, the Gatwick shambles has shown how little was put in place to enforce it.

After my review was published, several commercial manufacturers got in touch to tell me how their products could deter and disrupt predatory drone attacks.

Lord (Toby) Harris of Haringey. Photograph: Ian Nicholson/PA

Some of these are deployed elsewhere in the world – apparently effectively. Some have even been trialled in the UK at public events last year.

Apologists for Chris Grayling and his transport department have suggested that none of these would have been good enough to help last week. Yet when the army was called in, it turns out that some of their kit was in fact able to help protect the Gatwick runways.

What seems to have happened is that the government has dithered about what should be done to safeguard our airports, waiting for the “perfect” technical solution rather than utilising the best that might be available. No doubt this indecision avoided anyone having to find the money to do it.

On Friday, Grayling wrote to MPs to say that the government was now working with all airports to ensure that they have plans in place to respond to such incidents. Another case of horses and stable doors.

Those airports should have had in place tried and tested processes both to mitigate the likelihood of this sort of drone disruption and also to manage the consequences without having thousands of disappointed passengers sleeping on floors. And the Department for Transport should have made sure that those plans were in place and that they had been practised and exercised.

The complacency has been inexcusable. The consequences, had this been a terrorist attempt to bring down planes full of holidaymakers, are unthinkable.

Toby Harris, Lord Harris of Haringey, is a Labour party politician in the House of Lords