Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, if she will take steps to allow German School parties on short term visits to the UK to use identity cards as accepted travel documents at the UK border.

EEA identity cards are among the least secure documents seen at the UK border and are, as a rule, not as secure as corresponding national passports. They continue to dominate detection figures for document abuse at the border.

The Government is committed to strengthening the security of our border, so we phase out the use of EU, EEA and Swiss national identity cards as a valid travel document for entry to the UK.

From 1 October 2021, EU, EEA and Swiss nationals will require a passport to travel to the UK unless they have status under the EU Settlement Scheme (EUSS), are frontier workers, S2Healthcare Visitors or Service Providers from Switzerland. These groups will still be able to use national identity cards for travel until at least 31 December 2025.

Making an exception to this for German school parties would mean treating a particular group of EEA citizens whose rights are not enshrined in the withdrawal agreements more generously than other EEA citizens, and more generously than students from other countries.

We do not accept identity cards as a travel document from any other nationalities. This means we expect the millions of people who visit the UK from outside the EU (including the USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand) each year to hold a passport. We will now expect those visiting from EEA countries to do the same.

We have provided almost a year’s notice for this change to allow people to plan ahead and obtain a passport, if they need to, before they travel.