Why has six months of validity been wiped from my son’s new passport?

Simon Calder answers your questions on post-Brexit passports, travel insurance, Covid-19 regulations and bringing pets to the UK

Today’s reader was renewing because of Brexit rules (Simon Calder)

Q My son’s old passport was due to expire in June 2021. Because of the Brexit rules I decided to renew it now. His new passport arrived today, but it is only valid to 8 January 2026. I appear to have lost six months of validity. I thought the extra months would be added to the expiry date.

Surely this isn’t fair. Is every person who renews their passport with six months to go losing that validity? Should I write to my MP?

Name supplied

A You can try writing to your MP, but I am not sure how much good it would do. If he or she voted for the Brexit deal, then this was one of the predictable consequences, so presumably your MP was fully aware and regards it as a price well worth paying.

First, the validity rule that now applies. The UK has become a “third country” in the EU context. Previously, British passports were valid for travel anywhere in the European Union up to and including the date of expiry. Now the government says you need a minimum of six months remaining on the day you travel to the Schengen Area (which includes most EU nations).

Next, the UK has long had a traveller-friendly policy of adding any unexpired time on your passport to the renewed travel document. You would have expected, prior to Brexit, your son’s passport to be valid to June 2026. However, in the context of adult passports, any non-EU passport valid for more than 10 years is regarded as expired by the European Union exactly a decade after it was issued. This is a recipe for mayhem at frontiers.

Therefore the government abruptly ended that policy. Although it needed only to restrict the validity for adult passports it chose to do so for child documents (valid five years) too – which is why your son has lost six months of validity, in addition to the length of time we are currently spending on lockdown unable to travel anywhere.

I have asked the Home Office if it will reintroduce the credit for unused time for children’s passports, but I am not holding my breath.

Q I travel with a motorhome. The only thing I book in advance is a flexible return ferry ticket, then on arrival I wing it. As you have written, my Ehic [European Health Insurance Card] continues to be valid for travel in the EU. Do you know of any insurance which would enhance this, eg by covering the cost of medical evacuation? I simply do not need full travel insurance.

Gillian H

A As you are aware, the Ehic covers medical treatment on the same basis as local people in all 27 European Union countries; that normally means you get care free, or at very low cost, at public hospitals.

While the government here has come up with a post-Brexit UK Global Health Insurance Card (Ghic), there is no need to have one of these cards until your existing Ehic expires. (If you have neither card you can still, as a UK resident, claim medical treatment in the EU27 by contacting the NHS overseas branch in Newcastle.) There is currently no difference in validity between the two cards; the Ehic formerly covered Switzerland, Iceland and plucky Liechtenstein, but one of many odd effects of Brexit has been that we no longer get free healthcare in those non-EU nations.

The UK government, the travel industry and insurers stress that the Ehic/Ghic is no substitute for good holiday insurance. “It will not cover any private medical healthcare or costs, such as mountain rescue in ski resorts, being flown back to the UK, or lost or stolen property,” says the Foreign Office. Neither card is valid on cruises.

Having said that, a significant number of travellers choose to rely upon the right of reciprocal medical treatment instead of travel insurance. They might make that choice because premiums are disproportionately expensive for them, due to their age and/or pre-existing medical conditions. Or, perhaps like you, they may simply not have a definite duration for their trip.

If the option of medical evacuation is important for you, then take out a standard travel insurance policy that will cover this eventuality. Subtracting the potential cost of routine healthcare is unlikely to make the premium any lower; indeed many travel insurers require customers to have an Ehic/Ghic to take advantage of medical treatment at public hospitals in order to reduce the cost of settling claims. If you are planning extensive travels, though, you may decide to forgo the medivac option, as well as cancellation and loss/theft cover, and have more cash to extend your trip.

Q I have been reading your coverage of the new “test before travel” rules and in particular passengers who have been stranded at airport hubs because their tests were deemed to have expired halfway through the journey.

You wrote that they should not be denied boarding so long as they were travelling on a “single passenger record”. Does mean that both flights must be with the same airline?

Matthew

A No, and I will explain more in a moment. First, some context. The government’s new “test before travel” scheme came into effect at 4am last Monday morning. Travellers by air, rail or sea to the UK must provide a negative Covid test obtained no more than three days before departure. The passenger faces a fine if they fail to comply. Significantly, so does the transport operator that took them.

The original rules for the scheme had an obvious flaw for anyone travelling to the UK via a hub airport: a test that was valid for the start of the journey could technically run out before boarding the onward flight. I pointed out this discrepancy to the Department for Transport (DfT) in advance of “test before travel” coming into effect, but to no avail. Predictably, some passengers got stuck trying to board their UK-bound connecting flights because the airlines believed the travellers had not complied with the government’s rules. The DfT says the airlines were wrong to do so, because they had been told they would not be fined for helping a passenger return from a hub airport.

The rules have now been amended to say: “If you have one or more connecting flights to the UK, you should take a test as close as possible to the date of the first flight – if the connecting flights were booked as a single passenger record.”

On any multi-stage journey it is always best to have all flights on the same booking reference (a six-character alpha-numeric code such as A1B2C3). Trips can be on a single airline, eg Emirates via Dubai; or partners such as Iberia from Latin America to Madrid then British Airways to Heathrow; or on normally unconnected airlines such as BA and Air Canada.

Whichever applies, you are protected if a connection is missed. It is essential if you have baggage that you want checked through to your final destination. Not only does this save time, in these tricky days it may not be possible to go through immigration to baggage reclaim at the transfer airport.

Q My girlfriend lives in Finland but spends much of her time in the UK. She has recently rescued a bulldog puppy who she wants to bring over and who will live permanently in the UK with me. On the vet’s advice she has been told the breed of the dog should not travel in the hold of a plane due to the risks to its health, and ideally should be in the cabin. The weight restriction is 8kg and he’s growing all the time, so time is against us. There are no flights into the UK that allow this.

Our plan was for her to travel to Paris with the dog, make her way to Calais and travel over on the Eurotunnel. A further problem is she doesn’t drive so I want to travel across in my car to collect her and immediately return to the UK with her and the dog.

In terms of the requirements of bringing a pet into the UK, we are confident we have satisfied the criteria (rabies vaccination, worming treatment, dog is chipped, etc). But with the national lockdown and Covid rules, am I able to go to France, pick her up in Calais – or better still in Paris – and return to the UK a few hours later?

Ben B

A I can’t fault your ambition and optimism to attempt such a feat when so much of Europe is locked down. But given the very strict rules on movement both within the UK and abroad, I wonder if I can suggest a different approach?

Your girlfriend flies from Helsinki to Amsterdam; there is a convenient afternoon flight with KLM, which welcomes sub-8kg dogs in the cabin. She touches down at 3.30pm then travels by train to Rotterdam. The city is a good place to stretch legs of both the dog and herself, and makes an easy connection to the Metro line to Hook of Holland for the ferry to Harwich, which leaves at 10pm. The dog can stay in special kennels on board.

They will arrive at 6.30am the next day in the Essex port, which is where I suggest you pick them up. You would be permitted, I believe, under lockdown rules as an essential journey. The government says where “it is reasonably necessary for the pet’s welfare, you may collect the animal”.

Good luck.

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