Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps the Government has taken to ensure that people are aware of how much time they need to have left on their passports in order to travel to the EU after the UK leaves the EU.

The Home Office has a duty to inform citizens and businesses about how leaving the EU might affect them, and to advise on the steps they may need to take to prepare for EU Exit.

Alongside business as usual operational communications, HM Passport Office (HMPO), working with Home Office, is part of the Cabinet Office-led Public Information Campaign to help achieve this. This includes campaign activity focused on passport renewal and EU citizens’ rights. This campaign includes print, out of home and TV advertising.

On 8th January 2019 a separate passport marketing campaign launched as part of the wider cross-government EU Exit Public Information Campaign. The passport-specific activity, via social media and digital advertising, encourages customers who are planning to travel to Europe post-EU Exit to check the validity of their passport using the online checker. To date 2.3 million users have checked their passport validity.

To support this marketing activity, HMPO has been working with other government departments and stakeholders from across the travel industry, asking them to share messages on their own customer channels. This work included the distribution of a toolkit including promotional materials in October 2018.