UK Electronic Travel Scheme rollout – Kingsley Napley comment
Katie Newbury, a partner in the immigration practice at Kingsley Napley LLP, commented on the Government announcement about the rollout schedule for the UK’s Electronic Travel Authorisation (ETA) Scheme.
Commenting on the Government announcement regarding the timetable rollout of the UK’s Electronic Travel Authorisation (ETA) Scheme, Katie Newbury, partner in the immigration practice at law firm Kingsley Napley LLP, says: “Announcement puts travellers to the UK on notice that there is now an extra admin step and cost to be grappled with before they leave for British soil. While for the majority this will be a relatively straightforward step, it does mark a significant change to the process of travel for non-visa nationals (ie those who do not need a prior visa to enter the UK as a visitor) and for some will bring to light the particularly strict rules the UK has on refusing entry to those who fail certain ‘character’ tests. The UK has a particularly inflexible and strict approach to historic criminal convictions and it is likely that some who have previously visited the UK without issue will in future find themselves refused an ETA. Where an ETA is refused an individual will instead need to apply for a visit visa, which is a more complex, time consuming and costly process and there is no guarantee that all will qualify for this. So while the ETA will do much to level the playing field between visa and non-visa nationals coming to the UK as visitors in that all visitors will have their criminal background checked, without doubt it will create a plethora of new cases in relation to visa refusals on the basis of criminality or previous immigration history. The Home Office has previously said it expects there to be around 30 million applications for ETAs a year once the system is fully operational. If only 1% of those have criminal convictions which would not have previously needed to be disclosed this will generate (assuming they all apply) an extra 300,000 visa applications for the Home Office to process. There are real concerns around the capacity of UK Home Office staff to deal with this additional case load and we also expect litigation to flow from Home office decisions as there is currently no right of appeal against refusal of a visit visa. Given some visitors may have issues completing the new processes properly, may find themselves caught by the new rules or could even encounter issues at the airport, travellers are well advised to do their digital paperwork well in advance of boarding their flights to flush out any problems early and hopefully have time to remediate them.”
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