It’s official, the Summer is over, and with many little sproglets back at school, we thought the theme for this week’s question would be timely, in a sort of reminiscing kind of way, which focuses on travel, little people……. and passports.

A recent piece in The Telegraph tells us that family living arrangements may well be stored on a chip in children’s passports, as part of a series of measures to clamp down on international child abduction. This proposal comes from a report published by the European Commission.

This would mean that things like custody or contact schedules would be placed on the chip.

Our question to you this week then, is this: do you think such a scheme be useful?

Possible answer: perhaps, but certain types of abduction which involve parents removing children from their current jurisdiction, may well take place prior to any orders on contact being set by the courts, meaning that no information at the time of abduction may be present in the passport, and therefore would make the scheme less effective. Living arrangements are also fluid – how will the scheme, and subsequently the families cope with changes on the ground, when the law finds it hard as it is to cope with such change in a timely fashion…. and could this new proposal if implemented be a potential human rights breach?