The UK Border Agency has been replaced by the Home Office directorates ‘UK Visas and Immigration’, ‘Immigration Enforcement’ and 'Border Force'. In July 2014 the National Audit Office found that there has been mixed progress in addressing the concerns that had led to the abolition of the UKBA, and concluded that it is too early to detect an impact of organisational improvement on customers and stakeholders. Her Majesty's Passport Office has also been brought under direct Home Office control, with effect from 1 October 2014.
A scheme was introduced in 2004 to provide free passports for British citizens then aged 75 or over “in grateful commemoration for their wartime efforts”. The scheme is aimed at those who were 16 or older at the end of the war.
This note provides some general information about the UK's "biometric” passports (also known as “ePassports”), which it began to issue in 2006. The passports include a microchip which stores a digitised image of the holder’s passport photograph as well as the biographical details printed on the passport. Non-biometric passports continue to be valid until they expire.
This Bill would deal firstly with the transfer of border customs functions to the new UK Border Agency. It would also introduce new naturalisation requirements, deal with various other citizenship issues and place a new duty on the UK Border Agency to safeguard the welfare of children, also making provisions in relation to trafficking babies and children for exploitation. Some elements of the Bill underwent significant change in the Lords. The Bill as first published would have provided for immigration control to be introduced on air and sea routes within the Common Travel Area (the UK, Ireland, the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands), but these controversial provisions were defeated in the Lords. Originally the Bill would also have restricted the involvement of the higher courts in immigration and nationality cases, but a Lords amendment limited the scope of this restriction.
At the Commons Committee stage, the clause relating to the Common Travel Area was changed again and the original provisions reinstated. The introduction in the Lords of a grace period for those close to qualifying for naturalisation was reversed and the original provisions relating to judicial review were also reinstated.
This paper is on the Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Bill [HL] (Bill 86 of 2008-09). This Bill would deal firstly with the transfer of border customs functions to the new UK Border Agency. It would also introduce new naturalisation requirements and deal with various other citizenship issues. The Bill as it was introduced in the Lords would have provided for immigration control to be introduced on air and sea routes within the Common Travel Area but these provisions were defeated in the Lords. Originally the Bill would also have restricted the involvement of the higher courts in immigration and nationality cases, but a Lords amendment limited the scope of this restriction. The Bill would introduce a new duty on the UK Border Agency to safeguard the welfare of children and make provisions in relation to trafficking babies and children for exploitation.