NO passports needed to get into Britain under new Home Office plans for ‘frictionless travel’

01.01.2024 - 10:54 / breakingtravelnews.com

Passports could become a thing of the past for those arriving in the UK under new Home Office plans to create ‘frictionless travel’ at Britain’s borders.
New hi-tech e-gates will be fitted at airports which will be so advanced they will allow arrivals into the country using only advanced facial recognition.

Government officials hope the new tech will bring Britain’s border up to the standard developed elsewhere, like Dubai, which uses facial recognition for 50 nationalities and Australia.
Trials of the new e-gates are set to begin this year. Phil Douglas, director-general of UK Border Force, said the aim was to create an ‘intelligent border’ that used ‘much more frictionless facial recognition than we currently do.

Britain is already rolling out electronic travel authorisation (ETA) for foreign arrivals jetting into the UK who do not need a visa. The scheme costs £10 per passenger.
Travellers are required to download an app, answer a set of questions, scan their passport and provide a photo, with only those granted the ETA able to board flights into the UK.

The scheme is already used for Qataris and will extend to nationals of Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Jordan in February.

The Home Office is also seeking to implement ETA for all visitors to the UK who do not need a visa for short stays, including European nationals.

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The biometric details for British and Irish travellers has already been secured as part of the current UK passport application process.

Speaking of the new plan, border chief Mr Douglas told The Times: ‘We will know a lot more information about people upfront. We will know if they’ve been in the UK before. We’ll know what their compliance with immigration laws is. And we’ll know if there’s any records of them on our security systems. So there will be some people who won’t be getting on the plane.’

There are more than 270 e-gates in place at 15 air and rail travel hubs in the UK that will all need replacing with the new tech, which officials say will be more secure and process arrivals faster.

British e-gates were originally restricted to British and EU arrivals but over the years their use has been extended to include arrivals from Canada, Iceland, Japan, New Zealand, America, Australia, and several other countries.

However, the current electronic border systems have not been without their faults, having suffered a number of failures in recent years.

During the May bank holiday last year a system collapse sparked pandemonium in airports, following a failed upgrade, which led to four-hour queues.
And two years earlier, a technical gaffe caused the gates to fail three times in the space of two months, prompting passengers to be