UK airports are introducing a major rule change to passport control in July. Access to e-gates will be expanded to include younger children, the Home Office has announced.

From July 8, children aged eight and nine returning to the UK will be eligible to use e-gates. The gates use facial recognition technology to compare passengers’ identities with the photos in their passports, which is generally quicker than manual inspections. Children must be at least 120cm tall so they can be seen by biometric scanners and accompanied by an adult. Under current rules, passengers aged under 10 are banned from using the gates, forcing many families to queue for passport booths. The policy to cut the minimum age means up to 1.5 million additional children will be able to use them, the Government suggests. In addition to the 13 UK airports with e-gates, children aged eight and nine will also be permitted to use them at ports in Brussels and Paris, where juxtaposed checks take place.

Migration minister Mike Tapp said that expanding access means more families would “experience a swifter and smoother journey home” this summer.

Border Force director-general Phil Douglas said increasing access to e-gates enabled “highly skilled officers to focus on intercepting those who pose a threat to the UK”.

UK e-gates are available to Brits as well as nationals from the EU, Australia, Canada, Iceland, Japan, Liechtenstein, New Zealand, Norway, Singapore, South Korea, Switzerland and the US. They can also be used by members of the registered traveller service.

Karen Dee, chief executive of Airports UK, the trade body for UK airports, said: “This is a welcome development as it will give more families the ability to take advantage of this technology, speeding up the border process and reducing waiting times for many.”

E-gates were first introduced in UK airports in 2008 to provide an automated route through immigration for travellers with biometric passports. The UK now has nearly 300 e-gates.

The gates use facial recognition technology to verify the traveller's identity against the data stored in the chip in their biometric passport, and to run the data against numerous databases to determine whether the traveller is a security risk.