Mr. Daniel Holder:

The way electronic free travel authorisation will work is that it will be a requirement for anyone other than British or Irish citizens travelling into the UK, including the North, to first apply for electronic pre-travel clearance so it would not be a question of across the Irish Sea from Belfast to Britain. It would be a question of someone travelling from Dublin or Donegal to Northern Ireland. Clearly, the UK Government may have imagined introducing this requirement on EU 26 nationals. It may not apply to those EU 26 nationals who have settled status. Of course, proving that is a different matter when there is no physical proof of status. What the UK Government may have had in mind was the example of someone who lives in Warsaw, travels to London for a holiday or business and applies in advance for electronic pre-travel clearance. That is not particularly onerous. However, someone who lives a few miles over the Border and wishes to nip into Strabane, Derry or Newry to go shopping or go to a friend's birthday party because kids at school raise it at the last minute could be captured by this because there will be a requirement. The UK has set out that one of the objectives of doing this is to ensure that everyone is counted in and counted out of the UK through electronic clearance and digital borders but, of course where there are no controls at points of entry, and obviously we are not suggesting there should be. In the context of the common travel area and land border, that clearly is not going to happen. If the UK is trying to monitor and check that people have stayed only as long as visitors are allowed to stay, etc., that will not work crossing the land border because there will be no record of entry and people could be accused of overstaying without being able to prove the contrary.

The second point relates to impracticality. An EU citizen or non-visa national such as a Brazilian residing in Donegal who up until now has been able to freely enter across the land border will no longer be able to do so, although the Border will be invisible because there will be no checks as such or at least none are planned to date. If such a person was captured by an in-country check, he or she could unwittingly find himself or herself in irregular status and could face arrest, detention and deportation, which are some of the most serious sanctions available. A number of MPs have raised the issue of how it is intended that this system will apply in the common travel area but there has been no response we are aware of from the UK Government. Certainly nothing in the policy paper that was published today deals with the specific circumstances of local journeys across the land border.