Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps her Department is taking to ensure that collective passports can be taken up by other countries that are signatories to the 1961 Council of Europe treaty.

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.

Decisions whether to issue collective passports under the treaty, or not, are a matter for the individual signatory countries. Several countries have declined to continue accepting UK-issued Collective Passports this year, including Belgium, Germany, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Poland, Slovenia and Sweden.

It is for each nation to decide what documents they require for travel, just as the UK can determine our own requirements now we have left the EU.