Brexit ban on EU ID cards ‘disastrous act of economic self-harm’, says tourism boss

"disastrous act of economic self-harm" is an apt description for Brexit itself.

This is the best summary I could come up with:

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With visitor numbers to leading UK tourist attractions struggling since the pandemic, a tourism leader has put part of the blame on Britain’s ban on Europeans travelling on ID cards.

After Brexit, the UK banned EU citizens from making business or leisure trips with their national identity cards.

The main beneficiaries of the UK imposing extra red tape on prospective language students are Ireland, Malta and the United States.

The Institute of Tourist Guiding reported an almost total collapse of school group bookings after Brexit and Covid.

In 2022, Patricia Yates, chief executive of VisitBritain, told MPs: “You will find destinations like Hastings absolutely decimated by a lack of school visits.”

Talks are understood to have taken place between senior UK tourism figures and opposition politicians on the prospect of widening exemptions swiftly were a Labour government to be elected.

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The original article contains 523 words, the summary contains 140 words. Saved 73%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

Failure of Brexit

The main beneficiaries of the UK imposing extra red tape on prospective language students are Ireland, Malta and the United States.

Hmm. So what's this about?

googles

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/insecure-id-cards-phased-out-as-travel-document-to-strengthen-uk-borders

From today (Friday 1 October 2021), most EU, EEA and Swiss citizens will need a valid passport to enter the UK as the government stops accepting national identity (ID) cards as a travel document.

These ID cards are some of the most abused documents seen by Border Force officers and, last year, almost half of all false documents detected at the border were EU, EEA or Swiss ID cards.

They can be easily abused by people attempting to come into the country illegally and by stopping accepting these forms of ID, the government can prevent organised criminal gangs and illegal migrants using them to enter the UK unlawfully.

I mean, I assume that most people in the EU have passports.

And while I can imagine that Malta or Ireland, both EU members, might be fine with using an EU ID card to prove identity, I'm sure that we in the US aren't, any more than an EU member is going to let someone from the US in if they just show up with a state driver's license (the closest analog we'd have to a national ID card).

There was a point when we and Canada used to let people from each other's countries in just with just driver's licenses, but that was ended as part of the post-9/11 security changes. Gotta have a passport (or equivalent) now.

Also, a lot more Americans have passports these days. Used to be quite unusual, like, single-digit percentage of the population not many decades back.