Checks tightened on child travel

TRAVELLERS to the UK are coming under increasing scrutiny if they are accompanying another person’s child.

Reader Barbara Lerch from Boulogne, a long-time French resident whose daughter was born in France, was asked to produce a parental consent letter when travelling with her eight-year-old grandson on the Eurostar. They were going on a trip to England to improve his English.

She said: “My daughter and her children do not have the same name as myself. In July, at the Gare du Nord, after being waved through French customs, we arrived at the British passport control desk and the official asked me if I had written permission from my daughter to travel with her son.”

She told them she did not, at which point the official questioned her grandson about who she was. He replied “my grandmother”, and the official allowed them through. “She told me there had been an increase in child-trafficking, hence extra precautions,”

Mrs Lerch said. “How many people with different names to the child they are travelling with are being stopped and how many holidays ruined?”

A spokeswoman for the UK Border Agency said it was uncommon for a passport official to ask for a letter; however, it is recommended if travelling with a child who is not your own. She confirmed this was due to concerns about child-trafficking and the procedure may become more common.

A letter is not a legal requirement, she said, and a person should not be prevented from travelling by passport officials if they do not have one. However some travel companies now ask for one, she added.

“In a situation where there is a serious concern, the passport official might call the police, who would check things out if there appeared to be something strange about the relationship between the child and adult and the child was not clear about the adult’s identity.”

Heightened concerns about child security is not just a British matter. French news website rue89.com reported how a woman was not allowed on to a plane at Paris’s Charles de Gaulle airport with her baby, for an internal French flight, because she could not produce identity papers for him or her livret de famille.

When the woman queried it, saying at two-months-old he did not have papers yet, a check-in official referred to “all these child abductions.”

An adviser at the airport said policies varied by travel firm, so travellers should check them in advance.

British children must have their own passport to travel.

French residents can find more on the British Embassy’s site at http://ukinfrance.fco.gov.uk

When applying for a passport for a child, you use Form C2, which is signed by the parent or guardian.