UK Parliament / Open data

Nationality and Borders Bill

My Lords, I rise very briefly to say that the Green group would certainly have attached a signature to this motion had there been space. Like everyone else, my inbox has been utterly swollen with emails and letters about this.

I will make an additional point which no one else has. Travelling has now become much more stressful. There are extra stresses and worries. Not having a piece of paper just multiplies that. I draw here on my own example of helping an older gentleman to make some travels across the channel recently. He carries a whole wodge of printed-out Covid vaccine passports. Every time we travel, we must have a passenger locator form; there is huge stress until it is printed out. He is lucky enough to be a British citizen, so he then puts his passport with those printed-out pieces of paper, and there is a sigh of relief. However, there are additional difficulties if you do not have that piece of paper. In the case of this gentleman, several times recently the travel has gone wrong, his phone has run out of charge and he has been left relying on the kindness of

strangers to pull through. However, if you need your phone to prove your settled status, that is not going to help. We cannot assume that people are always going to have charged, working devices with them. Just printing out a piece of paper would offer a level of assurance for travel in these difficult times.

About this proceeding contribution

Reference

819 cc1377-8 

Session

2021-22

Chamber / Committee

House of Lords chamber
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