Passport reform urged to stop parents with children being delayed at borders

Campaigners are calling for changes to passports to prevent parents and children with different names from being stopped at borders.

The long-running campaign is being backed by Labour MP Tulip Siddiq after she spent 45 minutes convincing border officials that the child she was travelling with was her daughter.

"It was quite a confrontational discussion for quite a while," she said.

"They demanded different documents, asked collective questions and kept looking at my daughter expecting her to answer but she doesn’t talk as she’s only a year and a half old."

The Labour MP for Hampstead and Kilburn whose daughter was given her husband’s surname, has backed a petition to include both parent’s names on children’s passports.

She’s also written to Home Secretary Amber Rudd who has rejected the idea.

Ms Siddiq said: "If we had a simple change of two names on the passport stating who the mother and father is then we could go through immigration and we wouldn’t face these problems."

"They could spend the extra time stopping criminals."

It’s estimated that hundreds of thousands of travellers, mothers in particular, have had problems with passports in the last five years.

That number is likely to be on the rise as social attitudes change.

A YouGov poll in 2016 found only 59% of women would take their husband’s name.

That’s compared with a similar poll by Eurobarometer into British attitudes in 1994 which said the figure was 94%.

Mother of three, Catherine Eden said she was stopped on the way back from a trip to America with her youngest son.

She had to convince the border guard that he was hers and is backing the call for passport reform.

"It made me feel a little bit uneasy to have those questions asked about my son," she said.

"I knew I wasn’t doing anything wrong but it does make you feel as if you might be doing something wrong."

In a statement the Home Office said it had "no plans to introduce parental details in the observation page of a child’s passport".

"A passport is a travel document, and its fundamental purpose would change if it were to identify a parental relationship," it added.

"We have a duty to safeguard children and to prevent people trafficking, child sexual exploitation and other crimes committed against children.

"That is why Border Force staff need to be content that the adult travelling with the child has parental responsibility, or parental authority has been given to travel with the child.

"We aim to do this quickly and with as minimal disruption to passengers as possible."

Jane Greenwood, a 49-year-old mum of three from Suffolk, said she was left "incredibly angry and deeply humiliated" by a dispute involving her 12-year-old daughter at Stansted earlier this year.

She explained: "They refused to believe I was her mother because we didn’t share the same name and in the end my husband had to be called back from the baggage carousel to ‘claim’ her.

"I felt incredibly angry and deeply humiliated. I will travel with my children’s birth certificates in future but feel furious that I should have to do this."

Sam Bowen claims she is stopped at border control every time she re-enters the UK with her six-year-old daughter.

Ms Bowen kept her maiden name and has travelled with her daughter regularly since splitting from her ex-husband.

She claimed that on the first occasion she was stopped, five years ago, she was asked "very uncomfortable" questions by officers, including why her and her daughter had a different skin colour.

Her daughter is often left "quite distressed by the atmosphere of accusation and suspicion", even though Ms Bowen has always travelled with a copy of her birth certificate since the initial incident.

But she said her experience when leaving the UK is completely different.

"I have travelled with my daughter to a number of countries all over the world and have never been asked to prove her identity when leaving the UK," she said.

"This means that she could be taken by anyone, anywhere, so how is this upholding the UK border control’s explanation of this treatment, ensuring the safeguarding of the child and minimising child trafficking?"

Australian Maree Wallis, 37, of Kingston upon Thames, was held up when travelling between London and Copenhagen with her son, who was 11 weeks old at the time. She faced additional questioning to confirm they were related upon arriving in Denmark and when they left.

Her son, now four years old, and her 18-month-old daughter have surnames that combine her surname with her Spanish husband’s and so they always travel with their Spanish ‘family book’, which is the country’s official registration of a couple and their children.

(c) Sky News 2017: Passport reform urged to stop parents with children being delayed at borders