British passport

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

  • British Passport
  • Pasbort Prydeinig
    British nationals
ExpirationAdult: 10 years
Child: 5 years
CostAdult (16 or older)[2][e][f][g]
Standard
(32 pages): £ 88.50
Frequent traveller
(50 pages): £100.50

Child (under 16)[2][f]
Standard
(32 pages): £57.50
Frequent traveller
(50 pages): £69.50
Fees above are only for applications made online from within UK

A British passport is a

His Majesty's Passport Office, an agency of the Home Office
, since 2014. All passports issued in the UK since 2006 have been biometric.

The legacy of

right of abode in the United Kingdom
.

Between 1920 and 1992, the standard design of British passports was a

royal coat of arms emblazoned in gold. From 1988, the UK adopted machine readable passports in accordance with the International Civil Aviation Organization standard 9303. At this time, the passport colour was also changed to burgundy red, to bring it into line with the European Community passports of the other member states
. The previous blue hardback passport continued to be issued in tandem with the new design until stocks were exhausted in 1992.

Pre-Brexit, the contract for printing British passports had been held by British company De La Rue. In 2018, the contract for printing post-Brexit was awarded to Franco-Dutch company Gemalto, which in 2019 became Thales DIS, part of the multinational Thales Group. The passport booklets will be printed more cheaply in Poland, with a controversial loss of printer jobs at De La Rue, but the passports will be personalised in the UK across two sites.[4][5][6][7] All passports are now issued with the blue design and they are made by Thales DIS in Poland.[8][9][10][11]

British citizens have visa-free or visa on arrival access to 188 countries and territories; the international access available to British citizens ranks sixth in the world according to the 2023 Visa Restrictions Index.[12] Since the introduction of biometric passports in 2006, a new design has been introduced every five years.[13]

History

Timeline
Various changes to the design were made over the years:[14]
  • 1914: the first 'modern' passports featuring a photograph of the holder were issued.
  • 1915: passports featuring a cardboard cover, validity period, and description of the holder were first issued.
  • 1927: the country name changed from "United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland" to "United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland" (alternatively the name of the colony, territory, or protectorate appeared here).
  • 1954: the name of the Secretary of State was removed.
  • 1968: the validity was extended from five years renewable up to ten, to ten years non-renewable.
  • 1972, end: several modifications were made. A special blue
    maiden name
    of a married woman were removed.
  • 1973, May: an optional 94-page passport was made available which provided many more pages for immigration
    visas
    for frequent travellers.
  • 1975: lamination over the bearer's photograph was introduced to make alteration harder. Overprinting of the laminate was added in 1981 to make removal easier to spot.
  • 1979:
    exchange controls
    were abolished, and the foreign exchange page was removed.
  • 1982: the holder's occupation and country of residence were removed.
  • 1988, July: changes were made to ease the introduction of machine-readable passports later in the year. Joint passports were no longer issued and the descriptions of distinguishing features and height were removed. At the same time the number of pages was increased to 32 pages in a standard passport, whilst the jumbo passport was reduced to 48 pages.
  • 1988, August: the old style started to be replaced by the burgundy passport, which included the first-ever printed mention of the European Community on the cover and granted automatic free movement of labour to British citizens in the other 9 EEC countries (at the time), and reciprocally provided access for those nation's workers into the British economy.[15] Some offices issued the remaining stock of old-style passports until as late as 1993.[16]
  • 1998: Digital facial image rather than a laminated photograph, and intaglio or raised printing on the inside of the covers. Children under 16 are no longer included on new adult passports.[17]
  • 2006: Biometric passports (also called ePassports) comply with the US Visa Waiver Program.
  • 2010: The Identity & Passport Service announced that the British passport was to be redesigned. Pages of the passport will contain well-known British scenes including the White Cliffs of Dover, the Gower Peninsula, Ben Nevis and the Giant's Causeway. There will also be new security features, namely moving the chip which stores the holder's details to the inside of the passport cover where it will no longer be visible (this gives additional physical protection as well as making it much harder to replace the chip without damage to the passport cover being spotted), a secondary image of the holder printed onto the observations page, new designs now stretching across two pages and a new transparent covering which includes several holograms to protect the holder's personal details.[18]
  • 2015: HM Passport Office unveiled the design and theme of the new passport as 'Creative United Kingdom' at Shakespeare's Globe, London on November. The design features British cultural icons such as William Shakespeare, John Harrison, John Constable, Charles Babbage, Ada Lovelace, Antony Gormley, Elisabeth Scott and Anish Kapoor; iconic British innovations such as the Penny Black and the London Underground; and British landmark structures like the Houses of Parliament, London Eye, Edinburgh Castle, the Pierhead Building in Cardiff, Titanic Belfast and the Royal Observatory Greenwich. As part of the Press release the HM Passport Office said the new passport is the most secure in the world. The passport was released in December 2015. De La Rue has a 10-year contract with HM Passport Office designing and producing the British Passports starting in 2010 as well as the new 'Creative UK' passport in 2015.[19][20]
  • 2019: References to the European Union removed.
  • 2020: Burgundy passports to be phased out over the first few months. New manufacturer
    offset carbon emissions during the manufacturing process.[23]

Early passports (1414–1921)


British passports issued in 1857 (left) and 1862 (right).

King Henry V of England is credited with having invented what some consider the first passport in the modern sense, as a means of helping his subjects prove who they were in foreign lands. The earliest reference to these documents is found in the Safe Conducts Act 1414.[24][25][1] In 1540, granting travel documents in England became a role of the Privy Council of England, and it was around this time that the term "passport" was introduced. In Scotland, passports were issued by the Scottish Crown and could also be issued on the Crown's behalf by burghs, Lord Provosts of Edinburgh and Glasgow, senior churchmen and noblemen.[26] [27]Passports were still signed by the monarch until 1685, 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; all of these records still exist. Passports were written in Latin or English until 1772, then in French until 1858. Since that time, they have been written in English, with some sections translated into French. In 1855, passports became a standardised document issued solely to British nationals. Passports in England and Wales were issued by the Home Secretary, and in Scotland by the Lord Provost of Edinburgh or Glasgow. They were a simple single-sheet hand-drafted paper document.

Some duplicate passports and passport records are available at the British Library; for example IOR: L/P&J/11 contain a few surviving passports of travelling ayahs from the 1930s.[28] A passport issued on 18 June 1641 and signed by

King Charles I still exists.[14]

Starting in the late 19th century, an increasing number of Britons began travelling abroad due to the advent of railways and travel services such as the

British Nationality and Status of Aliens Act 1914
. Thus, in 1915 the British government developed a new format of passport that could be mass-produced and used to quickly identify the bearer. The new passport consisted of a printed sheet folded into ten and affixed to a clothed cardboard cover. It included a description of the holder as well as a photograph, and had to be renewed after two years.

Passport booklets (1921–1993)

British passport issued in 1924

In October 1920, the League of Nations held the Paris Conference on Passports & Customs Formalities and Through Tickets. British diplomats joined with 42 countries to draft passport guidelines and a general booklet design resulted from the conference.[30] The League model specified a 32-page booklet of 15.5 cm by 10.5 cm (6.1 inches by 4.1 inches). The first four pages were reserved for detailing the bearer's physical characteristics, occupation and residence.

The British government formed the Passport Office in the same year and in 1921 began issuing 32-page passports with a navy blue hardcover with an embossed coat of arms. "BRITISH PASSPORT" was the common identifier printed at the top of all booklets, while the name of the issuing government was printed below the coat of arms (e.g. United Kingdom, New Zealand, Hong Kong). Cut-outs in the cover allowed the bearer's name and the passport number to be displayed. This format would remain the standard for most British passports until the introduction of machine-readable passports in 1988. It continued to be issued in the United Kingdom until the end of 1993.

As with many contemporary travel documents worldwide, details were handwritten into the passport and (as of 1955) included: number, holder's name, "accompanied by his wife" and her maiden name, "and" (number) "children", national status. For both bearer and wife: profession, place and date of birth, country of residence, height, eye and hair colour, special peculiarities, signature and photograph. Names, birth dates, and sexes of children, list of countries for which valid, issue place and date, expiry date, a page for renewals and, at the back, details of the amount of

rubber-stamped
note confirming the change.

British passport issued in 1991 prior to the complete changeover to machine-readable European Community passports

If details and photograph of a man's wife and details of children were entered (this was not compulsory), the passport could be used by the bearer, wife, and children under 16, if together; separate passports were required for the wife or children to travel independently.[32] Until 1972 the passport was valid for five years, renewable for another five, after which it had to be replaced.[33]

Renewal of a passport required physical cancellation of the old passport, which was then returned to the bearer. The top-right corner of its front cover was cut off and "Cancelled" was stamped into one or both of the cut-outs in the front cover, which showed the passport number and the bearer's name, as well on the pages showing the bearer's details and the document's validity.

For much of the 20th century, the passport had a printed list of countries for which it was valid, which was added to manually as validity increased. A passport issued in 1955 was valid for the British Commonwealth, USA, and all countries in Europe "including the

USSR, Turkey, Algeria, Azores, Canary Islands, Iceland, and Madeira";[34] during its period of validity restrictions eased and it was endorsed "and for all other foreign countries".[35]

The British visitor's passport

A new simplified type, the British Visitor's Passport, was introduced in 1961. It was a single sheet of cardboard, folded in three so as to consist of six pages the same size as those of a regular passport, and was valid for one year. It was obtainable for many years from

Employment Exchanges, as agents of the Passport Office, and later from a Post Office. It was accepted for travel by most west European countries (excluding surface travel to West Berlin
), but was dropped in 1995 since it did not meet new security standards. A cancelled passport, which was returned to the bearer, had its top-right corner cut off, which had the effect of removing a corner from every page.

Machine-readable passports (1988–2006)

European Community passport as introduced in 1988 before the Community became the European Union

After the passport standardisation efforts of the 1920s, further effort to update international passport guidance was limited. The United Kingdom joined the European Communities in 1973, at a time when the Communities was looking to strengthen European civic identity.[36] Between 1974 and 1975, the member states developed a common format. Member states agreed that passports should be burgundy in colour and feature the heading "European Community" in addition to the country name. Adoption by member states was voluntary.[37] While most of the Community adopted the format by 1985, the UK continued to issue the traditional blue booklet.

Rapid growth of air travel and technological change led to the International Civil Aviation Organization defining a new international standard for machine-readable passports, ICAO Doc 9303, in 1980.[38] An ICAO standard machine-readable passport was a significant departure from the traditional British passport layout, and the British government did not immediately adopt it. In 1986, the United States announced the US Visa Waiver Program. The concept allowed for passport holders of certain countries to enter the US for business or tourism without applying for a visitor visa. The UK was the first country to join the scheme in 1988; however, a requirement was that the traveller hold a machine-readable passport.[39][40] Thus, the British government was, after nearly 70 years, forced to retire the traditional navy blue League of Nations format passport.

Non-biometric European Union passport issued after 1997

With the move to machine-readable passports, the UK decided to adopt the European Community format. On 15 August 1988, the Glasgow passport office became the first to issue burgundy-coloured machine-readable passports. They had the words 'European Community' on the cover, later changed to 'European Union' in 1997. The passport had 32 pages; while a 48-page version was made available with more space for stamps and visas. Two lines of machine-readable text were printed in ICAO format, and a section was included in which relevant terms ("surname", "date of issue", etc.) were translated into the official EU languages. Passports issued overseas did not all have a Machine Readable Zone, but these were introduced gradually as appropriate equipment was made available overseas.

While other British territories such as Hong Kong and the Cayman Islands were not part of the European Community, they also adopted the same European format, although "British Passport" remained at the top rather than "European Community".

In 1998 the first digital image passport was introduced with photographs being replaced with images printed directly on the data page which was moved from the cover to an inside page to reduce the ease of fraud.[citation needed] These documents were all issued with machine-readable zones and had a hologram over the photograph, which was the first time that British passports had been protected by an optically variable safeguard. These documents were issued until 2006 when the biometric passport was introduced.

Biometric passports (2006–present)

Series A (2006–2015)

Series A biometric British passport

In the late 1990s, ICAO's Technical Advisory Group began developing a new standard for storing biometric data (e.g. photo, fingerprints, iris scan) on a chip embedded in a passport. The September 11 attacks involving the hijacking of commercial airliners led to the rapid incorporation of the group's technical report into ICAO Doc 9303.[41]

The Identity and Passport Service issued the first biometric British passport on 6 February 2006, known as Series A. This was the first British passport to feature artwork. Series A, version 1 was produced between 2006 and 2010, while an updated version 2 with technical changes and refreshed artwork was produced between 2010 and 2015.[42]

Version 1 showcased birds native to the

Scottish Gaelic languages were included in all British passports for the first time,[43] and appeared on the titles page replacing the official languages of the EU, although the EU languages still appeared faintly as part of the background design. Welsh and Scottish Gaelic preceded the official EU languages in the translations section.[42]

In 2010, Her Majesty's Passport Office signed a ten-year, £400 million contract with De La Rue to produce British passports.[44] This resulted in Series A, version 2, which introduced minor security enhancements. The biometric chip was relocated from the official observations page to inside the cover, and the observations page itself was moved from the back of the passport to immediately after the data page. All new art was produced for version 2, this time with a coastal theme. Data and visa pages featured coastal scenes, wildlife and meteorological symbols.[42]

Renewal of the passport required physical cancellation of the old passport, which was then returned to the bearer. The top-right corners of its front and back covers were cut off, as well as the top-right corner of the final pair of pages, which had been bound in plastic with the bearer's details and a digital chip; a white bar-coded form stating "Renewal" and the bearer's personal details was stuck onto the back cover.

Series B (2015–2020)

Series B biometric passport issued after March 2019

HMPO's contract with De La Rue involved the design of a new generation of biometric passport, which was released in October 2015 as the Series B passport. The cover design remained the same as Series A, with minor changes to the cover material. The number of pages of a standard passport was increased from 32 to 34, and the 50-page 'jumbo' passport replaced the previous 48-page business passport. New security features included rich three-dimensional UV imagery, cross-page printing and a single-sheet bio-data page joined with the back cover. A new typeface for the cover (Times New Roman) was adopted as well. At the time of its introduction, no other passport offered visa free access to more countries than the UK's Series B British passport.[45]

The theme of the Series B passport was 'Creative United Kingdom', and HMPO described the Series B artwork as the most intricate ever featured in a British passport. Each double-spread page set featured artwork celebrating 500 years of achievements in art, architecture and innovation in the UK. Ordnance Survey maps were also printed inside featuring places related to the imagery. A portrait of William Shakespeare was embedded in each page as a watermark.[45]

The Series B passport was initially issued to British citizens with "European Union" printed on the cover. However, new stocks of the Series B from March 2019 onwards removed the reference in anticipation of withdrawal from the EU. The premature change was controversial given the uncertainty and division in the UK during 2019.[46]

Series C (2020–present)

Series C biometric passport issued after March 2020

The introduction of the burgundy machine-readable passport between 1988 and 1993 had been met with significant resistance. The burgundy passports attracted criticism for their perceived flimsiness, mass-produced nature and sudden deviation from the traditional design.[47] There was speculation regarding re-introduction of the old-style passport following the UK's withdrawal from the European Union.[48] but the government denied any immediate plans.[49] Such a change was supported by some due to its symbolic value, including Brexit Secretary David Davis,[50] while others thought the undue weight put on such a trivial change raised the question of whether the government was able to prioritise its order of business ahead of Brexit.[51] Nevertheless, the British passport was due for an update in 2020, as the existing De La Rue passport contract was expiring.

On 2 April 2017,

Immigration Minister Brandon Lewis announced that the blue passport would "return" after exit from the EU.[6]

Following open tender under EU public procurement rules in 2018, the Franco-Dutch security firm Gemalto was selected over British banknote and travel document printer De La Rue. The result of the tender proved highly controversial, as it saw the production of British passport blanks moved from Gateshead in the UK to Tczew, Poland.[9][10][11] Most passports are produced in Poland, due to it being more cost efficient. However, urgent, fast-tracked or premium-service passports, which are 34 or 50 pages, are locally produced at application-processing centres in the UK.[55]

On 10 March 2020, the new Series C blue British passport officially began to be issued. Series B passports would also be issued while the Home Office used up old stock.

On 25 September 2020,

HMPO announced all British passports issued would now be blue.[56]

Series C introduces a polycarbonate laser-engraved bio-data page with an embedded RFID chip. Also embedded in the data page is a decoding lens which optically unscrambles information hidden on the official observations page and inner front cover.

Daffodil, respectively) embossed on the back cover.[58]

National identity cards

Second World War

An adult Identity Card – 1943

The National Registration Act established a National Register which began operating on 29 September 1939 (National Registration Day). This introduced a system of

identity cards
, and a requirement that they must be produced on demand or presented to a police station within 48 hours. Identity cards had to be carried by every man, woman, and child at all times. They included information such as name, age, address, and occupation.

Prior to National Registration Day, 65,000 enumerators across the country delivered forms which householders were required to record their details on. On the following Sunday and Monday the enumerators visited every household, checked the form before issuing a completed identity card for each of the residents. All cards at this time were the same brown/buff colour.

Three main reasons for their introduction:

  • 1. The major dislocation of the population caused by mobilisation and mass evacuation and also the wartime need for complete manpower control and planning in order to maximise the efficiency of the war economy.
  • 2. The likelihood of rationing (introduced from January 1940 onwards).
  • 3. Population statistics. As the last census had been held in 1931, there was little accurate data on which to base vital planning decisions. The National Register was in fact an instant census and the National Registration Act closely resembles the 1920 Census Act in many ways

On 21 February 1952, it no longer became necessary to carry an identity card. The National Registration Act of 1939 was repealed on 22 May 1952.

Abandoned plans for "next generation" biometric passports and national identity registration