“I’ve been to England. It’s nice, but not that nice. We’ll go to Italy instead. It seems they can use the income.” That was a Dutch Financial Times reader, cancelling his London hotel reservation last year because of the trouble his Russian wife was having getting a UK visa.

It was typical of the messages I received after my recent column on how Britain’s attitude to visitors was damaging the country. The column quoted UK retailers who said that Chinese customers were snubbing them in favour of their French and Italian rivals. This was because the UK was not part of the European Schengen area. One visa gave the Chinese shoppers access to all 25 Schengen countries. Visiting the UK required an additional visa and many could not be bothered.

Our Dutch reader’s wife already had a Schengen visa. (The couple live in Russia.) After going to the trouble and expense of translating employment and income documents into English and applying for a UK visa, she was turned down because she had failed to demonstrate that her husband, who she had said in her application would be paying for her trip, had the means to do so. “You might think, well just supply proof of your income and that’s it?” he wrote. “It’s not that simple. We have to re-apply, redo the application form, again pay the application fee. And, of course, translate the [Russian] proof of my income.” Not worth it.