Hello and welcome to today's independent travel podcast. It's Wednesday the 27th of March,

and I make no excuse or apology for returning to the subject of passport validity because I cannot

believe there is so much information that is plainly wrong doing the rounds.

And I just want to make sure that you are not denied boarding when you turn up to board your plane.

Or conversely, that you don't renew your passport months or maybe even years early because somebody has given you

some misinformation about passport validity. So let me start by telling you what the rules are

for the European Union if you've got a British passport and then I will tackle a number of

myths.

Up to Brexit, a British passport was valid, up to and including the expiry date printed on the passport.

That was nice and easy.

We then voted democratically to leave the EU and the government negotiated on our behalf to become third country nationals, the same as people from Venezuela, from Samoa, from Macau, many other countries

around the world. That meant that we became subject to European and wider Schengen area rules

on passport validity.

In particular, there's one rule which keeps getting people hundreds of them sometimes in a day,

and that is that your passport cannot have had its 10th birthday.

It must have been issued less than 10 years ahead.

And of course, British passports, many of them,

32 million according to the BBC, are valid up to 10 years and nine months. That wasn't a problem

before Brexit. It certainly is a problem now. The other test, your passport must pass,

relates to the expiry date. Are there three months remaining on the day you intend

to leave the European Union? Those are the tests now for some of the myths. First one, and I've heard

this just this morning from various confused people, if you have a passport that's valid for more than 10 years,

...