Adam Boulton: Bank holiday travellers beware – getting to and from Europe is about to get a whole lot harder
The August bank holiday has arrived – the cue for millions to get back to work after whatever holidays they have managed to enjoy.
Over this weekend many Britons will be coming home from Europe through ports, airports and the Channel Tunnel.
Their trips may have included frustrating delays and border checks but there won’t be another summer which runs as smoothly as 2024 for many years ahead.
Passengers waiting to cross the Channel at the Port of Dover in July. Pic: PA
In a couple of months’ time, the European Union will start imposing its new “Entry-Exit System” (EES) on UK citizens.
That will mean fingerprint and biometric recognition for every British visitor to the EU’s Schengen area by the end of this year.
From November 2025 we will have to obtain a de-facto visa for entry in advance, at a cost of €7 (£6) for a three-year permit.
Nobody doubts that EES is going to lead to delays and greater costs for travellers and border control authorities alike.
For example, car passengers arriving at Dover have been told processing could take 15 hours before they get on a ferry.
The UK supported the strengthening of EU borders when it was a member state.
After Brexit, the UK now faces the consequences from the other side of the fence.
Lorries queued up waiting to enter the Port of Dover this summer. Pic: PA
Starmer could seek to delay super-sensitive restrictions again
These extra practical frictions for UK travellers are coming in at the very time when the new Labour government in the UK is trying to establish friendlier relations with the EU.
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has a meeting with the newly re-appointed European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen in September and there are plans to re-establish regular meetings between the UK and the bloc.
But in terms of identity, the new system is merely a confirmation of this nation’s changed status.
From now on British citizens will be treated by the European Union in a similar way to the reception they receive from other allied nations such as Japan and the United States.
Europe is, however, overwhelmingly the main destination for British travellers, whether for business or leisure.
Last year official UK government statistics report 66 million visits by Britons to Europe, 60 million of them to core EU countries, compared to 4.5 million to North America, the next most frequently visited.
Spain, Greece, Italy, France and Portugal make up Britons’ top five foreign holiday destinations.
Making travel from the UK to Europe more irksome is super sensitive for both sides and implementation of the new border controls has been repeatedly postponed.
First planned in 2017, they were originally meant to come in in 2021. Even the latest start date for biometric checks of 10 November 2024, is a month later than the most recent October deadline. At least travellers in the autumn half-term should now avoid the hassle.
Sir Keir’s imminent talks could just possibly lead to further delay, although this seems unlikely.
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What to expect in the near future
According to The Times this week, Sir Keir’s agenda is topped by agreeing to three years of freedom of movement for the under-30s both ways between the UK and the EU.
The arrangement would be similar to the one the UK now shares with New Zealand and Australia. Previously Rishi Sunak’s government flatly ruled out this idea when the EU suggested it.
So expect biometric testing to start in November.
Travelling across borders this summer, at airports and ferry ports, I could see the technology already in place, lines of booths and sensors, ready and waiting.
Air travellers will be processed on arrival in Europe. Those using ferries or trains are expected to complete the formalities at UK points of exit.
The costs and delays are likely to be here.
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From Paris Olympics: Could delays become the norm?
Eurostar is spending £8.5m on extra facilities at St Pancras, including a new overflow room.
It plans to have terminals to confirm the Electronic Travel Information and Authorisation System (ETIAS) dotted around the station as a whole because there is not enough room in its part of the terminus.
In Folkestone, where cars and lorries board the Eurotunnel, an extra £70m has been earmarked.
The Port of Dover is expanding processing facilities for coaches into its western docks and plans to have more holding space on site for cars “by 2027”.
Brexit supporters hope the new rules will help deter illegal migrants. Pic: PA
New system ‘effectively a visa’
Officially the new compulsory permission from ETIAS to enter the EU is not a visa.
But Simon Calder, the veteran British travel journalist, says it “amounts to one” and is broadly similar to the Electronic System for Travel Authorisation (ESTA) travel waiver to the US.
He points out that both require an online application in advance, the supply of significant personal information, the payment of money and result in permission to cross a border.
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As well as details of age, home address and passport, applicants will also be asked if they have criminal convictions or have recently visited war zones.
It is estimated that ETIAS will take three days to process applications.
There will be a grace period of six months for muddles after the introduction of ETIAS for UK citizens in May next year but from November 2025 those who do not have ETIAS approval will not be allowed to travel. Stamping of passports on entry and exit will be dropped.
Scammers are already active online offering to process ETIAS.
Frontex, the European Border and Coastguard Agency, stresses the only way to get an ETIAS will be to apply at europa.eu/elias, at a fixed rate.
The system is not yet open or required for UK citizens.
Issues of immigration and identity impacted by change
The EU’s Schengen travel area includes all 27 member states, except for Ireland and Cyprus, as well as Norway, Switzerland, Lichtenstein and Iceland. The Common Travel Area between Ireland and the UK remains in place.
In the long run of years, these new measures may make travel more efficient for those with the right documentation.
They will also increase the control of the authorities over who may enter their zone.
The UK and the EU both want to clamp down on illegal migration.
But inevitably the bureaucracy of travelling is also affecting how people see their own identity.
The last, pro-Brexit, UK government wanted to reach bilateral deals with individual European countries, in part to undermine the concept of European solidarity.
The EES is a pushback by the so-called “European Superstate” that it does not intend to be divided so easily.
EU citizens, who are more used than Britons to ID cards, already have to go through technological checkpoints to enter the UK and are subject to similar restrictions on duration of stay.
Practical barriers are going up between the UK and Europe, leaving those who identify as both British and European caught in the middle.
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Travelling from France to Ireland by ferry this week, I could see this psychodrama advertised on the back of the vehicles coming on board.
Ireland has been transformed and liberated by its entry into the European Community in the wake of the UK. With its open border to the south, Northern Ireland has a foot in both camps. In trade terms this wound was rubbed in the long wrangle over the protocol and then the Windsor Framework.
More poignantly, the bumper stickers on the cars and trailers travelling home to the north via Cork were confused with the letters “NI” stamped on the European flag, just like on all the other member states of the European Union – to which the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland no longer belongs.
For some UK citizens, extra travel hassle and ETIAS charges may be prices worth paying for “taking back control”. Many others, with new anxieties over travel plans, followed by fretting in queues, may not feel that way.
For ordinary travellers, these changes in travel regulations to Europe may matter as much in practice as some of the new government’s more talked about challenges.
Sir Keir Starmer cannot afford to brush them aside.
UK
Nazi flags, patient ‘sexually assaulted’, ‘dog poo left at whistleblower’s home’: Sky News investigates UK’s ‘worst ambulance service’
A grandmother who claims she was sexually assaulted by a private paramedic on the way to hospital has told Sky News she has been failed by the ambulance service.
Warning: This article contains references to sexual abuse and suicide
It comes as a staff survey of the same service – the South East Coast Ambulance Service (SECAmb) – heard damning claims of a culture of discrimination and bullying; with allegations of Nazi flags on team video calls and a “boy’s club” culture where whistleblowers are punished.
It’s been more than a year since a Sky News investigation first heard of a culture of rampant sexual harassment and abuse in ambulance services.
These issues have existed for decades right across the country.
But now the GMB union, which represents ambulance workers, is calling on the chief executive of SECAmb, Simon Weldon, to resign.
It’s after a survey of workers heard high instances of inappropriate behaviour and bullying; with a huge fear of speaking out.
It’s led the GMB to call for an independent investigation, with one representative branding the ambulance trust “the worst in the country”.
The trust told us it is committed to working with unions for positive change.
‘I just lay there, terrified’
Juliette was treated by paramedics after she was hit by a car while cycling
Juliette, 65, has spent four years trying to get her local ambulance trust to listen. In 2021, she accused a private paramedic working with SECAmb of sexually assaulting her.
Hit by a car while cycling through Surrey, she remembers lying on the stretcher in agony, afraid to move in case she was paralysed. Two paramedics carried out assessments for around 90 minutes before driving her to hospital.
But as soon as she was alone in the back with just one of them, she claims the male paramedic suddenly told her he wanted to “check her hips”.
“There was no asking, no consent,” she says. And instead of touching her hips, she claims he sexually assaulted her.
“With his left hand, he opened my shorts up – and put his right hand into my cycling shorts.
“Between my legs.”
Juliette says she was left feeling ‘insulted, betrayed and humiliated’
She doesn’t want to go into the details, but she says she temporarily froze, powerless and terrified of what he might do. All the while he stared down into her eyes and said nothing.
“I felt so uncomfortable. Shamed, frightened, shocked. I didn’t want it to continue.”
A letter of formal complaint
She said her brain eventually “snapped into place” and she moved her legs. She claims he then removed his hand, and sat behind her head in silence for the rest of the journey.
“I just lay there – terrified,” she whispers.
She reported it to the police the following day, but with no CCTV in the ambulance, it was her word against his. With no hope of a successful prosecution, the Met Police dropped the case.
South East Coast Ambulance’s response to a request for CCTV images
Then she turned her attention to the ambulance service, hopeful it would act.
We’ve seen correspondence between Juliette’s lawyers and SECAmb, which promised to respond to the formal complaint within 25 days. That was repeatedly delayed for several months.
“It was about seven months after the accident. They still hadn’t acknowledged anything to do with the sexual assault,” she recalls.
“They hadn’t answered any questions.”
Eventually, they effectively said the assault hadn’t happened; claiming that Juliette herself had started to remove her cycling shorts, and that “consent was given” for an examination after she complained of a pain in her leg.
She unequivocally denies every detail of this account.
She says it left her feeling “insulted, betrayed and humiliated”.
Why – she asks – would somebody think she had “wasted all this time”.
“It’s too late for me,” she adds, but she is making a stand to help others avoid the same trauma.
Amelia (not her real name) talking to Sky News’ Rachael Venables
Culture of discrimination, harassment and bullying
The GMB represents a large number of the 4,000 SECAmb staff, and recently carried out a survey of their members about their experiences of working life.
From the nearly 900 responses, the union claims they identified a culture of discrimination towards women staff members with sexual harassment, bullying, and a general “boys’ club” culture.
Of those surveyed, 25.6% had experienced bullying and 26% had witnessed inappropriate conduct. Racism was witnessed by 16% and sexual harassment by 17.2%.
What’s more, 80% didn’t feel confident the trust would support them if they flagged concerning behaviour.
‘He’s always been into Nazi stuff’
Ambulance worker Amelia (not her real name) told Sky News she finally blew the whistle on inappropriate behaviour a few years ago after she joined a video call with colleagues to discuss staffing levels.
One of the managers joined them from home. To Amelia’s shock, he appeared on their office screen with a large red, white and black Nazi swastika flag prominently behind him.
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NHS manager joined call with Nazi flag
On his desk was a framed photo of Adolf Hitler, next to what she says looked like a young woman at graduation. On the bookshelves sat a red swastika armband and what she was later told was a World War Two grenade.
She was horrified.
“I kept looking around the room thinking, ‘why is no one saying anything?’… When I spoke to people afterwards they said: ‘Oh yeah… he’s always been into Nazi stuff.”
At first, she blew the whistle anonymously, but was told she’d have to name herself and put in a formal grievance for it to be investigated.
A report seen by Sky News found the manager’s “inappropriate behaviour” should have been challenged, but he still works for SECAmb.
Amelia claims she was isolated by her colleagues, frozen out of meetings and uninvited to team events, saying “it killed my career”.
An independent report found there wasn’t enough evidence to prove that she had been deliberately excluded.
At one point the police were involved, then days later, she says, “I had bags of dog faeces on my doorstep. That went on for a few days, I felt like a prisoner in my own home”.
“Whenever I heard sirens, I got palpitations. I was terrified of who would be in that ambulance.”
‘They become the problem’
When people like Amelia speak out “they become the problem”, says Lib Whitfield, a senior GMB organiser.
Lib started working with the trust eight years ago, after an independent report was published, highlighting behaviours similar to those referenced in this article.
Senior GMB organiser Lib Whitfield
The culture is now the “worst it’s ever been”, says Lib, and she believes it’s the “worst in the country”.
“I am receiving calls every single day from members who are suicidal,” she adds.
Lib says the union has now written to the health secretary, Wes Streeting, with three demands.
“Firstly, we need a full independent investigation into the culture of SECAmb that results in actions and not just words,” she says.
“Secondly, we are calling for the resignation of the current chief executive who has overseen this getting worse.
“And thirdly, we are calling for an interim chief executive to be appointed who is external to SECAmb and who can have external reporting to ensure they are not corrupted.”
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We took these allegations to the ambulance trust, which wanted to point out that the alleged events happened before Mr Weldon took over as chief executive.
It also said it had issues with the way the anonymous survey was conducted.
A spokesperson said in a statement: “We continue to work hard to make SECAmb a safe organisation for all of our people and are committed to drive real change.
“The historic cases highlighted were thoroughly investigated, including through independent external reviews, and we firmly believe these cases do not reflect the views of the majority of our people on how it feels to work at SECAmb currently.
“We continue to engage openly with the whole trust about the further improvements we want to make and about the changes needed for the ambulance sector as whole.
“We remain absolutely committed to working with our unions to achieve this, although this will only happen with constructive collaboration on all sides.”
Health Secretary Wes Streeting did not respond to our request for an interview, but in a statement a Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson said: “This is an extremely concerning report and we are looking closely at it. Sexual harassment or abuse within the NHS is completely unacceptable and must be dealt with appropriately.”
Anyone feeling emotionally distressed or suicidal can call Samaritans for help on 116 123 or email jo@samaritans.org in the UK. In the US, call the Samaritans branch in your area or 1 (800) 273-TALK.
Liverpool have won the Premier League title after a 5-1 victory over Tottenham at Anfield.
Arne Slot’s men did it in impressive style, turning over Spurs in a convincing win.
It was a rocky start for the Reds after Dominic Solanke put the north London side ahead.
However, fortunes quickly changed in the first half as Liverpool scored three times without a response.
Captain Virgil van Dijk (centre) celebrates. Pic: Reuters
Salah on his knees in celebration after the final whistle. Pic: AP
Liverpool’s Harvey Elliott (below) and Jarell Quansah celebrate after full-time. Pic: PA
Slot cheers after the full-time whistle. Pic: AP
In the second half, it took until the 63rd minute for Mohamed Salah to make it 4-1 before a fifth followed.
The Reds have won the title in manager Arne Slot’s first season in charge, and move level with fierce rivals Manchester United on 20 league championships.
But it makes them arguably the most successful English club ever as they have won more European Cup or Champions League titles.
Liverpool captain Virgil van Dijk told Sky Sports after the final whistle: “It’s special and it’s something that we don’t take for granted. It’s amazing.
“A lot of emotions before the game, during the whole week, but we got the job done and we (are) truly deserved champions of England. (Liverpool is) the most beautiful club in the world and I think we deserve all of this. Let’s enjoy the next couple of weeks and let it sink in.”
Liverpool’s Kostas Tsimikas poses with a Premier League trophy cut out. Pic: Reuters
Manager Arne Slot and his team after the final whistle. Pic: AP
Slot took over last summer from Jurgen Klopp, who guided them to their previous and maiden Premier League title triumph in 2020, when the COVID-19 lockdown saw matches played behind closed doors.
He is the first Dutch manager to win the Premier League and the fifth man to do so in a debut campaign after Jose Mourinho, Carlo Ancelotti, Manuel Pellegrini, and Antonio Conte.
Speaking to Sky Sports he said: “They [the players] did an outstanding job today. The main job was to win. Everyone said we had got it already. But we had to make sure and we got over the line.”
Several players, including Alisson Becker, Trent Alexander-Arnold, Virgil van Dijk, and Mohamed Salah, played leading roles in both the 2025 and 2020 campaigns.
Van Dijk and Salah recently signed new contracts extending their careers at the club.
Mohamed Salah takes a selfie with fans after scouring the fourth Liverpool goal. Pic: AP
Fans at Anfield during the game. Pic: AP
Fans in the stands at Anfield before full-time. Pic: Reuters
Liverpool will have to wait until the final game of the season – at home to Crystal Palace on 25 May – to be presented with the Premier League trophy.
It will be the first time the club’s fans will have seen their side lift the top-flight title in person since 1990.
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Two pro-Palestinian demonstrators have thrown red powder on Tower Bridge – just moments before leading runners in the London Marathon went past.
The protesters were arrested on suspicion of causing a public nuisance and remain in custody, said the Metropolitan Police.
A video shared by Youth Demand, which is calling for a trade embargo on Israel, shows two people jumping over a barrier that separates spectators from the race course.
The pair, wearing t-shirts that say “Youth Demand: Stop Arming Israel”, are then seen standing in the middle of the road on the bridge.
Pic: LNP
They throw red powder in the air as an official marathon car goes past displaying the race time.
A motorbike with a cameraman on board continues along the route, while a second motorbike stops and one of the riders gets off and pushes the pair out of the way, just before the men’s elite runners pass.
Several police officers then jump over the barrier and detain the pair, the footage shows.
There appeared to be no impact on the marathon.
More than 56,000 participants were expected to take part in the 26.2-mile race through the capital.
Sabastian Sawe of Kenya won the men’s elite race in a time of two hours, two minutes and 27 seconds, while Ethiopia’s Tigst Assefa shattered the women’s-only world record in two hours, 15 minutes and 50 seconds.
Assefa beat the previous best of two hours, 16 minutes and 16 seconds set last year in London by Kenyan Peres Jepchirchir.
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Pic: LNP
The Metropolitan Police said in a statement: “At around 10.38am, two protesters from Youth Demand jumped over barriers at Tower Bridge and threw red paint on to the road.
“Marathon event staff intervened to remove the protesters from the path of the men’s elite race which was able to pass unobstructed.”
The force added that they were “quickly supported by police officers who arrested the protesters on suspicion of causing a public nuisance”.
The Met said the paint “appeared to be chalk-based” and was not expected to “present a hazard to runners yet to pass this point”.
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