Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what recent assessment her Department has made of the potential merits of allowing biometric residence permit holders to use e-gates at passport control.

To be eligible for entry via an e-gate at present, a traveller must hold a machine-readable biometric passport. Biometric residence permits are not compatible.

However, the Government has an ambitious vision for the future UK border, in which most people crossing the border will experience an e-gate style arrival, using automation as their only point of contact. We continue to look at options for expanding the use of e-gates to cohorts of passenger not currently able to use them.