New passport rules for dual citizens

[TheMagpieRobin]

I've seen quite a few stories about how dual citizens must now enter the UK on their British rather than foreign passport.

My kids are technically dual citizens as I am British and they can inherit British citizenship through me. Their dad is from another country and the children were born in that country, we live there and they have passports from that country. We've never bothered applying for British passports for them as there didn't seem to be a need. We don't have any plans to live in the UK or spend longer than a couple of weeks visiting.

I'm quite unsure whether the rule changes apply to them. I suspect the rules do apply and we'd need to get them British passports before we visit again but it's a bit ambiguous because we haven't "claimed" British citizenship for them. At the moment they are just Thai and if we wanted to apply for their British passport we'd have to send off a load of documents and pay a fair chunk of money. I'm not overly worried right now as we got their ETAs before the rule change and those are valid for another year or two and should be enough for them to enter??

Bit niche but I was wondering if anyone has a concrete answer for this based on their own experience?

@StellaShiningthis may have been mention but it’s fine to enter on UK on Irish passports. No ETA required.

Yes and no. This is how I (an Australian born dual citizen) massaged the rules to suit me.

Technically and legally, as a child of a British born person, I'm a British citizen. The link pp posted above confirms that. In theory, the new rules apply to me and I should enter the UK on a British passport.

But, the UK government has no record of me and my British parentage, so in practice when I applied for an ETA on my Australian passport it was approved and I was able to travel.

Bearing in mind that the only human screening was done by airline staff at point of departure. I entered the UK through the automatic gates and didn't speak to immigration staff.

Yes, this would work for my kids in the future. Unless someone checked their birth certificate and then my passport they wouldn't have any reason to think they were dual citizens. Maybe this is my excuse to fly alone and DH takes all his same nationality children haha.

Annoyingly I ordered all the relevant birth and marriage certificates a while ago but I've misplaced them. I find it so difficult to do things like this, I'll start the application then it needs me to photocopy a passport or fill something in but then someone needs a snack or their bum wiping and it gets put down for the day and when I get back to it I've got to start all over again.