London, Sept. 7: Labour MP Tulip Rizwana Siddiq, who happens to be the niece of Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Wazed, was separated from her 17-month-old daughter by a UK border official when returning from a recent family holiday in France, a fallout of her decision to keep her maiden surname and not her British husband's last name.

Siddiq has lodged a protest with the home office in London.

The problem has stemmed from the fact that Tulip, like many women today, has kept her maiden surname, while her daughter, named Azalea Joy when she was born in April last year, has taken that of the MP's English husband, Christian William St John Percy (shortened to "Chris Percy"), whom she married in 2013.

Returning from France, Tulip was separated from her husband at the border control and permitted to go through the fast-track queue to board the train service Eurostar with her pushchair.

The way immigration works on Eurostar is that passengers are vetted first by French border officials followed by their British counterparts.

"My daughter looks quite different to me, she looks like her dad," Tulip said. "At the UK border, the man looked at my passport for a long time and my daughter's passport and he said, 'Who is this girl?'

"I was really surprised by the question, and he repeated it, and I said, 'this is my daughter,' and he asked why we don't have the same name. He also asked for my marriage certificate and my birth certificate.

"There was a lot of discussion, and other asks for documents. I went back and the whole thing was very tense, my daughter was crying and saying 'mama, mama' but that didn't seem to be what would convince him."

Tulip told The Guardian that the delay for people in the queue behind and the tone of the questioning had left her feeling uncomfortable. "It wasn't exactly hostile but there was a real air of suspicion, I was made to feel like I had done something wrong. And they said I could leave my child with them when I went to look for my husband." "I do wonder what would have happened if my husband hadn't been there," she wondered. "My daughter and I do travel on our own. What would have happened next? Would they have let us go?"

Tulip, 34, who is part of the relatively new intake of feisty female MPs who have entered the Commons, was elected for Hampstead and Kilburn in North London in 2015.

Not willing to let matters rest, Tulip has now written to the home office calling for a change in regulations so that children's passports carry the names of both parents.

She found that an estimated 6 lakh women over the past five years had been asked to prove they were related to their children when taking their families through UK border control, leaving many stranded for hours if they did not have marriage or birth certificates or were travelling without their partners.

The problem is likely to become more common as women are increasingly likely to keep their maiden name after marriage, it was reported. Around one in seven women say they intend to keep their name after marriage, according to recent research by YouGov. A separate survey found that just 4 per cent of women intended to give their children their maiden name rather than the father's name.

"Things are changing and the law needs to catch up," Tulip argued. "I want to find a way to change this. I don't know why I should be penalised for not changing my name. I got married aged 30, I lived my life, I had a reputation under my maiden name."

The home office said: "We have a duty to safeguard children and to prevent people trafficking, child sexual exploitation and other crimes committed against children. We aim to do this quickly and with as minimal disruption to passengers as possible and that is why we encourage all parents to make use of the 'Emergencies' page in their child's passport where names and contact details of parents can be written."

On Twitter, many women gave their support to Tulip, among them the author Tahmima Anam: "Have often been asked the same question at the border." Lyndsey Jenkins said: "Yep, completely agree. I get this every time (esp being of different ethnicity to daughter). There needs to be a solution which treats.... Fathers & mothers equally (and a better solution to the real problems of trafficking not just asking the child 'who is this'."

But Sir Percy Bear was not sympathetic: "Yawn - happens to thousands - just travel prepared rather than with monster sense of entitlement.