DorsetKnob

So any clues how this is going to be enforced?

Schwann

I think we have to wait until tomorrow for the finer details of the way the guidelines are written.

Then we can find out if it is a case of "we'd rather you didn't" or whether Border Force Bob will arrest us at the frontier on the return.

u01sss3

As far as I know this will only apply to England. I'm planning to transit in LHR on Friday from Scotland so hoping it won't be an issue.

Dan1113

Wales has joined the ban so I would be surprised if Scotland doesn't either tbh.

Also, as you will see in the BA forum, mass cancellations have started for this month and into early December, so you risk being stranded abroad on the way back (or having to be rebooked with a transit somewhere with quarantine).

ahmetdouas

I think this title is misleading, there is no 'ban on international travel', more of a ban on holidays and leisure. The GOV.uk wording is deliberately ambiguous, it is up to you to decide if you are 'legally' allowed to travel for family, work reasons etc.

ahmetdouas

How will Border force Bob know when you left the country? I see this being 'enforced' like the Tier 1-2-3 restrictions in the UK, and I quote a London Restaurant 'we do not care if you mix indoors, it is not our job to police.' So looks like a 'we'd rather you didn't', and I am sure if you are famous or are all over instagram and appear on DailyMail showing off about it, you'd get an FPN of 200 GBP by Police after you'd returned if that assuming you didn't have to quarantine of course!

The lockdown will discourage people for travelling for no reason anyway, especially as travelling for holiday is quite limited given most of Europe is in lockdown, Asia is almost impossible to get into without quarantine, and the USA isn't much easier.

bluemoon68

When you return to the UK and hand in your Passenger Locator Form, the authorities can see if you left the UK after the lockdown came into force.

Duck1981

Similar to the five quarantines I was subject to over the last 3 months - not at all.

:D!

I don't know if the information appears on the screen when they scan your passport or if it requires a bit more digging, but they don't need a PLF to know when you last departed the UK.

If you have several passports with different names that the system hasn't linked, you might "get away" with it but you could also "get away" with lying on the PLF if nobody reads it

DaveS

I don't think the border force have good quality information for exit at least. There are still plenty of ways out of the UK where your passport is not always checked. Dover-Calais ferries is one such example, where the UK and French immigration officers rarely wake up to do anything. That might change at the end of the year of course. Those of us with multiple passports can enter and leave with different passports and it does not get flagged up. The UK has never really taken much attention of who leaves, unlike most other countries.

DorsetKnob

Multiple UK passports are linked, though foreign ones obviously not.

13901

UK authorities could simply ask the airlines to send their passengers' APIS information and use that. In my days at BA Heathrow Customer Services I've seen plenty of instances where US Homeland security had very clear visibility of our information and knew exactly, for those people they wanted to interrogate before boarding, who they were, residence & nationality, DoB and past travel including self-made connections or weird interlines. They knew, for instance, that a guy flying to ORD on BA had started his journey in Mogadishu on Daallo Airlines and transferred on BA at DXB. The UK government has either the same access or can get it fairly easily: if they want to enforce whatever blockage, whatever prohibition... they can.

:D!

What do you mean by "flagged up"? If you use a non-British passport to enter or exit the UK, and the UK is aware that you are also a British citizen, there is nothing to flag up.

For the past 5 or so years you have been obliged to send in all current foreign passports when renewing a British passport, and the British passport will be refused if the other passports are in different names unless you can prove you are unable to change the name in the other passport(s).

I have done this therefore I must assume that even if I put my Australian passport details in the outgoing API and British passport for the incoming, the UK authorities will be aware they are both the same person.

I suppose I could test this by using my Australian passport to enter the UK, leave with British passport in the API, then more than 6 months after the first entry try to enter again and see if they try to refuse me for "overstaying"

Relevant thread: Word with the fuzz!

DaveS

Yes, I fully accept everything you say. It would be fair to think the immigration systems would expect to see entry and exits for each person whatever passport they use. The reality is that you can leave the UK on a ferry and not be checked. You then will have just entries on whatever system they have. My wife renewed her UK passport last year and was caught out by the rule requiring foreign passports to be in the same name. But up until that time she was able to enter and leave with different names and no link between those names with no questions asked. The only point I am making is that these things are not checked as much as you would expect them to be.

lhrsfo

Clearly HMG is capable of checking if they choose to do so. And clearly, there isn't an automated system to do this currently and, given HMG's competence with IT systems, it's unlikely there will be one in the near future. So my guess is that the determined will be able to travel with a few lies here and there and with little risk of being caught - and then, if caught, only receiving an FPN. Were this the US, the substantive offence would be the lie and that would land you in a whole heap of trouble - but in the UK we don't really bother.

But I still ask myself who can sensibly do this? Perhaps someone with a second home somewhere less restrictive than here and who doesn't care if they get back before Christmas, or indeed before the Spring. I don't really see much need to spend too much time on enforcement when the practical difficulties will mean few people will be tempted to break the rules - and those few are all on FT!