Will my child’s passport be valid for travel to Ibiza?

Simon Calder answers your questions on travel documents, vaccine passes and refund rights

A faulty passport checker has led to unnecessary stress for many (Getty/iStock)

Q We need some urgent advice and are really hoping you can help. My daughter’s passport is valid until March 2022. However, it was issued in January 2017. We are due to fly to Ibiza on Saturday. Do you think they will accept her passport?

Danny

A Her passport is perfectly valid and I hope you have a lovely holiday. But I can fully appreciate your concern that it might not be – because the UK government’s online “passport checker” has been wrongly programmed and was generating false results when travellers filled in passport details.

Let me explain the series of events. Because of Brexit, the happy decades when your passport was valid in the European Union up to and including the date of expiry are over.

There are now two criteria:

Will three months’ validity remain on the date of intended return from the EU?

Was the passport issued in the past 10 years?

Clearly, your daughter’s passport passes both of those tests.

So why would the other passport checker say otherwise? Well, it’s all to do with the question of whether the passport was issued in the past 10 years. The reason: for decades the UK Passport Office generously gave extra credit on replacement travel documents for unexpired time on the old passports. While the UK was in the European Union that was no problem. But after Brexit we have become a “third country”, for which the rule is that passports are considered expired after they have been valid for 10 years.

In a presumably well-intended move to prevent people being affected by this, the Home Office has decided to subtract any extra months from the validity – even though, in the case of children’s passports, this is ridiculous, since the very maximum validity is five years and nine months, well inside the EU limit. So the checker believes your daughter’s passport expires in January 2022.

Because of a second flaw in the government’s understanding of the rules, wrongly asserting that a passport needs six months remaining, your daughter’s document is incorrectly showing as “Not valid for travel to Europe”.

It is alarming that the government should be causing unnecessary stress and upset. After I repeatedly pointed out the damage it was creating, the Home Office has now taken down the passport check. So enjoy your holiday, and – in the unlikely case that her passport’s validity is queried, show this response.

The lack of movement on entry to Britain is another blow for tourism (PA)

Q Any update on when we might hear about EU digital Covid pass being accepted by the UK?

Chris G

A No. Accepting overseas vaccinations is very important to millions of people who would like to come to the UK to visit loved ones or take holiday (as, in 2019, 41 million foreigners did). When, on 8 July, ministers announced they would allow fully vaccinated travellers to enter the UK from 150-plus amber list countries without quarantine, they stressed it was for NHS-administered jabs only. Ministers from France and Italy have written to the foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, pleading for their fully vaccinated citizens to be allowed to avoid quarantine.

The government said it would update parliament and the public on progress to recognise other jabs by the end of the parliamentary session.

On Friday I asked the Department for Transport what progress had been made, but I have not received a response.

Meanwhile, in a bizarre announcement to the last sitting of Commons on Thursday, the vaccines minister, Nadhim Zahawi said: “By the end of this month, UK nationals who have been vaccinated overseas will be able to talk to their GP, go through what vaccine they have had, and have it registered with the NHS that they have been vaccinated.” Yet British expatriates do not generally have GPs in the UK.

The minister also said: “We want to offer the same reciprocity as the 33 countries that recognise our app, and that will also happen very soon.”

But he gave no indication of any actual timeframe. This is concerning for people keen to travel to the UK but unable to quarantine – and also for the inbound tourism industry, which has been effectively closed for 16 months and sees little prospect of rescuing the summer.

At present Egypt is on the UK’s red list (iStock)

Q I have a holiday booked in Egypt in November and am due to pay the balance on 2 August. I have been in touch with the company to ask if I can change the dates to next year. They have responded by saying only that if they cancel the holiday then I will be offered a free date change. What are my rights?

Sue B

A Your rights are more generous than the company appears to indicate, which gives me some cause for concern.

First, the situation. A November holiday in Egypt sounds blissful, whether in and around the capital, Cairo; up the Nile in Luxor or Aswan; or across in Sinai at resorts such as Sharm El Sheikh. In my opinion, a good plan and something splendid to anticipate.

Next, the circumstances. At present Egypt is on the UK’s red list, requiring hotel quarantine on return to Britain. Under such circumstances, holidays will not be operating in Egypt.

By November I hope this unhappy red listing may well have ended. Egypt may have been moved to the amber-plus list, requiring self-isolation at home for 10 days. Or it could go amber, allowing anyone who has been doubly vaccinated to evade quarantine.

What counts, though, is the Foreign Office advice: go or no-go? Most companies will regard advice against all but essential travel to a particular country amounts to an instruction from the government to cancel trips.

The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) says: “If the FCDO is advising against travel to the package holiday destination when the consumer is due to leave, that is, in the CMA’s view, strong evidence that these unavoidable and extraordinary circumstances are likely to apply.”

If the trip is cancelled, you should be able to claim a full refund within 14 days of the cancellation – as opposed to a “free date change”.

And if you are declined a cash reimbursement? The CMA says: “If the consumer is refused a full refund, the package holiday company should fully explain why it disagrees that the holiday or travel is significantly affected.”

In short, though, keep waiting and hoping.

Email your questions to s@hols.tv or tweet @simoncalder