But those passports were phased out and the new ones have a much higher standard, in fact I find them to often be of higher quality in terms of the bio page than most other country's passports I've seen, save for the lack of biometric information encoded in a chip in them.

I heard rumours last year the UK was going to re-introduce visa-free travel in the coming years as all the phased out passports would be expiring around about now.