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PARLIAMENTARY WRITTEN QUESTION
Passports: Children (3 March 2020)

Question Asked

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what assessment her Department has made of the potential merits of including parents' surnames in the passports of their children.

Asked by:
Alberto Costa (Conservative)

Answer

Details in passports are fixed at the time of issue for the life time of that document.

Any parental details included in a passport at issue may not reflect subsequent changes in parental responsibility and so could not be relied upon from a safeguarding context by either border staff or other public sector agencies.

The passport is a travel document and its purpose is to confirm identity and nationality for the purposes of travel rather than relationship status.

We therefore have no plans to include parents' surnames in child passports.


Answered by:
Kevin Foster (Conservative)
11 March 2020

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