British passports may be issued to people holding any of the various forms of British nationality.
In the United Kingdom, British passports (United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland) are issued by the Identity and Passport Service. In the Channel Islands or the Isle of Man, British passports are issued by the Lieutenant-Governor.
In British Overseas Territories, British passports are issued by the Governor. In Commonwealth or foreign countries, British passports are issued by the Passport Section of a British Consulate, Embassy, or High Commission.
At present holders of the following forms of British nationality can apply for a British passport:
The three-character codes appearing after each type of nationality above are the ISO/IEC 7501-1 machine readable passport alpha-3 country codes of such British passports.
All British passports are issued in the exercise of discretion by Her Majesty's Government under the Royal Prerogative.
Under European Law, all British Citizens are European Citizens since they are 'Nationals of a Member State' and therefore entitled in law to move freely within the (European) Union with no more than a check on their identity and nationality upon entering the territory of another Member State. However, unless Identity Cards become available to British Citizens (planned for 2009), the only document that a British Citizen can formally use in this way is the British Passport. Accordingly, it appears clear that, unless prepared to issue an alternative identity document for the purposes of free movement rights, any refusal to issue a passport by the UK would contravene fundamental Treaty Rights of the Citizen (unless it could be justified on grounds of public policy, public security or public health) and be enforced in the British Courts (Article 39 TEU).
In any event, discretion must be exercised reasonably and not on a whim, and even though there is no statute governing the issue of passports, such Prerogative Powers are susceptible to the normal processes of judicial review (Council of Civil Service Unions v Minister for the Civil Service [1985] AC 374).
The right of abode, i.e., the right to enter and live in the UK freely, is held by all British citizens. It is also held by some British subjects and those other Commonwealth citizens who were patrials under the Immigration Act 1971.
Safe Conduct documents, usually notes signed by the monarch, were issued to foreigners as well as English subjects in medieval times. They were first mentioned in an Act of Parliament in 1414. Between 1540 and 1685, the Privy Council issued passports although they were still signed by the monarch until the reign of Charles II when the Secretary of State could sign them instead. The Secretary of State signed all passports in place of the monarch from 1794 onwards, at which time formal records started to be kept[1].
Passports were written in Latin or English until 1772 when French was used instead. From 1858, English was used, with some sections translated into French until 1921.
In 1858, passports became a standard document issued solely to British nationals. They were a simple single-sheet paper document and by 1914 included a photograph of the holder.
The British Nationality and Status of Aliens Act 1914 was passed on the outbreak of the First World War. This introduced, in 1915, a new format, a single sheet folded into eight and containing a cardboard cover. It included a description of the holder as well as a photograph, and had to be renewed after two years.
A 32-page passport, known colloquially as the Old Blue, came into use in 1920 with the formation of the Passport Service following international agreement on a standard format for passports, and remained in use until replaced by the European Union style machine readable passports in late 1988. An interesting aspect of the old blue passport was that the data entered into the passport was handwritten rather than typed or printed.
Two versions were available: one for individuals (but which could also include the person's spouse), and another for families which included children as well.
Various changes to the design were made over the years[2]:
The Passport Office will permit up to six passports to be held at any time, to circumvent difficulties caused by territories objecting to visas or immigration stamps from somewhere that they may be in conflict with. Historically this has including Israel/Arab States or US/Various Middle East States. It is also useful for frequent business travellers to have more than one passport so they can still travel whilst one passport is away getting a visa or something similar.
A new type, the British Visitor's Passport, was introduced in 1961, and was a single page cardboard document valid for a year and obtainable from a Post Office. It was recognised by most West European countries, but was dropped in 1995 since it did not identify the holder's nationality nor did it meet new security standards.
On 15 August 1988, the Glasgow passport office became the first to issue burgundy-coloured machine-readable passports[4]. They followed a common format agreed amongst member states of the European Community, and had the words 'European Community' on the cover. This was changed to 'European Union' in 1997. The passport is burgundy coloured, machine-readable, and has 32 or 48 pages. The machine-readable portion is two lines of printed text in a format agreed amongst members of the International Civil Aviation Organisation.
The current biometric version captures a digital image of the photograph, signature and reproduces these onto the personal details page of the passport. The whole page is protected from modification by a laminate, which incorporates a colour holographic image comprising a native British bird (a design feature found throughout the visa pages of the passport). The hologram is affixed directly over the holder's photograph (tilting the passport page in direct light reveals the image). An RFID chip and antenna are located on the obverse of the data page and hold the same visual information as is printed, including a digital copy of the photograph with biometric information for use with facial recognition systems. In addition, both the Welsh and Scottish Gaelic languages have been included in the British Passport for the first time. These now appear on the titles page and within the multilingual notes section, the latter also provides translations into the official EU languages as required.[5]
For the purposes of the European Communities treaties, the nationals of the United Kingdom comprise all British citizens, British Overseas Territories citizens by virtue of a connection with Gibraltar and British subjects with right of abode in the UK (mainly, but not exclusively, those connected with the Republic of Ireland before 1949). These UK nationals have the status of European citizen in common with nationals of other member states of the European Union.
British nationals who are not European citizens are issued what is known as "lookalike passports". These are similar to normal British passports, except that they do not have the words "European Union" on the cover, and do not contain any EU-specific information inside, e.g., the words "Passport - United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland" and the information on the photograph page are given only in English and French, rather than all the official languages of the European Union. However, the contents of new biometric passport are given in other official languages of the European Union rather than English and French only.
British passports are burgundy, with the coat of arms of the United Kingdom emblazoned in the centre of the front cover. The word PASSPORT is inscribed below the coat of arms, with EUROPEAN UNION (EU passports only) and UNITED KINGDOM OF GREAT BRITAIN AND NORTHERN IRELAND (or BRITISH ISLANDS — BAILIWICK OF JERSEY or BAILIWICK OF GUERNSEY or ISLE OF MAN or as appropriate) above. As with other countries, the biometric symbol appears at the bottom of the front cover under the word passport.
The British Passport includes the following data:
The information page ends with the Machine Readable Zone.
Each British passport contains on its inside cover the words in the English language only:
In older passports, more specific reference was made to "Her Britannic Majesty's Principal Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs," originally including the name of the incumbent.
Passports issued in overseas territories are issued in the name of the Governor, rather than the Secretary of State, in the name of Her Majesty.
Certain British passports are issued with printed endorsements in the Official Observations page. These form part of the passport when it is issued, and should be distinguished from immigration stamps subsequently entered in the visa pages:
"Holder is also known as Cliff Richard."
Under the Identity Cards Act 2006, probably from 2008, anyone applying for a passport will be required to have their details entered into a centralised computer database, the National Identity Register. Once registered, they will be obliged to update any change to their address and other personal details.
It is expected that the cost of a passport and ID card package will rise to at least £93 to help fund the new scheme.
Everyone applying for a passport from 2010/11 will have to submit to a digital fingerprint scan, with the prints to be stored on a database.[1]
In May 2006 a "Renew for Freedom" campaign [6] was launched by the NO2ID opposition group, urging passport holders to renew their passports in the summer of 2006 in order to delay being entered on the National Identity Register. This followed the comment made by Charles Clarke in the House of Commons that "anyone who feels strongly enough about the linkage [between passports and the ID scheme] not to want to be issued with an ID card in the initial phase will be free to surrender their existing passport and apply for a new passport before the designation order takes effect" [7].
In response, the Home Office said that it was "hard to see what would be achieved, other than incurring unnecessary expense" by renewing passports early [8].
The cost of obtaining a standard passport over the years has been as follows. It is expected that fees will rise to at least £93 to help fund the National Identity Register and ID cards, as discussed above.
The above fees apply for passports issued in the United Kingdom by the Identity and Passport Service. Passports issued outside the UK by the Passport Section of a British Consulate, Embassy, or High Commission cost £119 (as of April 2007)[17].
Unlike US Passports, pages cannot be added into British passports. If a passport is full, the bearer must apply for a new passport to use it.
However, unlike expired passports, passports without blank pages that have not been cancelled are still valid ID, and therefore can be used as such in the UK and for travel in the EU.
According to The Guardian, the information contained on a biometric passport can be viewed using readily available hardware and software. Information is stored in encrypted form on an RFID tag, with the password as a combination of information written on the passport, so that anyone with access to the passport will be able to read the chip. The passport is also vulnerable to brute-force attacks. And because it is possible to read the RFID tags remotely at a distance of several centimetres, it is not necessary to be in possession of the passport to extract the data.[2]
As a result, the cloning of the passport is a possibility. Because the biometric passport is supposedly highly secure and therefore trusted, it is thought that the holder of a cloned passport might be more likely to escape detection than the holder of a traditional passport.
(available at Dhaka ZIA airport) [193] [194]
(tourist), US$25 (business) [199]
(landing visa arrangement cancelled in 2002.)
The United States confers the following reciprocity arrangement for British passport holders in issuance of US visas [413]:
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Last updated on Monday September 24, 2007 at 05:23:47 PDT (GMT -0700)
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