Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what assessment she has made of the potential merits of allowing (a) EU school children entry to the UK on a collective passport scheme and (b) EU citizens to travel to the UK using an national ID Card from an EU country.

The UK is a signatory to the 1961 Council of Europe treaty which provides for collective passports for young people. Continued acceptance of these passports from those who have ratified the treaty is current practice. The UK has not left the Council of Europe.

The UK has left the EU, ended free movement and is aligning the entry of EU and non-EU citizens. Citizens from outside the EU (and other EEA countries and Switzerland) cannot use national identity cards for travel to the UK and EEA national identity cards are, as a rule, less secure documents than national passports, hence they dominate the figures for document abuse detected at the border. Our assessment is therefore their continued use presents a risk to border security which we are no longer obliged to accept.

All visitors from outside the EU are expected to hold a passport (and visa where necessary) and those visiting from EU countries will be expected to do the same.