Will the UK Really Ban Dual Nationals Who Don’t Have a British Passport? Alex Finch Writes for Free Movement

The following article first appeared in Free Movement on 23 February, 2026.

From 25 February the UK will begin enforcing pre-departure checks which require carriers to confirm that passengers have permission to travel. This has raised concern that dual British nationals who only hold a foreign passport will be denied boarding or refused entry to the UK.

The headlines are frantic:

“New passport rules set to affect more than one million Brits – who risk being banned from flights” (The Sun, 13 February)

“‘Scandalous and unacceptable’: readers on the new UK entry rules for dual nationals …” (“Some say they may stop visiting or even renounce their British citizenship owing to stricter requirements”) (The Guardian, 17 February)

“Dual nationals to be barred from entering UK without British passport” (The Telegraph, 17 February).

But there are a large population of dual UK / foreign nationals only holding a valid foreign national passport (referred to as dual nationals here) who have an existing electronic travel authorisation (also known as an ‘ETA’). 

This article looks at the status of that ETA, and how they can seek entry.

Can dual national British citizens use ETAs?

This is a sweeping change that will affect a lot of cohorts. Let’s take the example of a British citizen traveller who is also a national of a non-visa national country (i.e. someone who doesn’t need to apply for a visit visa in advance of their journey to the UK). They only hold a valid passport from the foreign country (with no certificate of entitlement), and they are coming to the UK for a visit from 25 February 2026. Let’s assume they are not intending to work or stay for longer than six months, etc., and generally would qualify for entry as a visitor were they not British. Are they going to be able to travel to the UK?

First let’s suppose they already have an ETA linked to their foreign passport. Until a few days ago, the UK ETA app allowed you to apply using a foreign passport even if you also declared that you were a British citizen, and such applications were granted. The ETA would support boarding. In a letter to ILPA on 17 December 2025, the Home Office reconfirmed that:

… all commercial aviation carriers flying directly to the UK are integrated into the iAPI (interactive advance passenger information) service and will be using the system to check permission to travel from 25 February 2026. As you are aware, carriers submit passenger data via the iAPI system, and for each submission, the Home Office returns a response confirming whether the passenger has valid permission to travel. Where carriers receive a ‘valid permission to travel’ response, no further proof is require…

The fact that the dual national has an ETA means that the airline is assured that there is no possibility they will receive a section 40 carrier charge, pursuant to the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999. This is the case even if we entirely set aside the fact that they are a British citizen, which is also a defence.

The primary change scheduled for 25 February is an enforcement of the permission to travel requirement against carriers. It would appear, therefore, that if the dual national succeeds in boarding the plane to the UK, their experience will be the same upon arrival at the UK border as if they arrived before that date. If they are an eligible national holding a chipped passport and not travelling with a child under ten years old, they may be admitted through the electronic gates. In other cases, they may use the ‘other passports’ queue and simply present their foreign national passport, answering in the normal way as to their identity and purpose of travel.

Do British citizens need to claim the right of abode?

Is a dual national doing anything wrong by seeking to enter the UK in this way? This issue was raised in Parliament in June 2025, and the Home Office minister confirmed that:

there is no single specific legal requirement that a British citizen must travel on a British passport. However, primary legislation is clear that evidence of right of abode in the UK can only be demonstrated at the UK border through the production of either a British passport or other passport endorsed with a certificate of entitlement to the right of abode. [AF1] This is the means by which British citizens demonstrate their right to enter the UK.

The introduction of ETAs makes no change to legal requirements for dual British citizens.

The primary legislation referred to is section 3(9) of the Immigration Act 1971, which says:

A person seeking to enter the United Kingdom and claiming to have the right of abode there shall prove it by means of (a) a United Kingdom passport describing him as a British citizen, (b) a United Kingdom passport describing him as a British subject with the right of abode in the United Kingdom, or… (e) a certificate of entitlement.

Section 3(9) sets out the ways in which a person who is making a claim to have the right of abode can prove it, and by implication the list is exhaustive. But it doesn’t say that anyone having the right of abode is required to carry those documents. The section only applies when the person is both seeking to enter the UK and claiming to have the right of abode. It sets out the way in which the claim may be evidenced, but the situation does not require such a claim to be made. We reach the same conclusion from paragraph 12 of the Immigration Rules.

The Home Office guidance to dual nationals published on 24 November 2025 states that if you are travelling to the UK before 25 February, “you should be allowed to board transport to the UK as normal, without an ETA”. From this date they warn “you may not be able to board your transport to the UK without a valid document [and] you will need to have additional identity checks to verify your citizenship before you can go through UK passport control.”  On Friday 20 February they updated this to state that carriers “may allow” passengers to travel if they have both an expired UK passport issued 1989 or later, and a valid passport for one of the nationalities that can get an ETA.

Will border officers conduct additional identity checks when the question of whether to allow the traveller entry can be decided based on their status as a foreign national? The idea that dual nationals in this situation would actually be refused entry seems far-fetched. This would mean detaining and removing arriving travellers simply because they are British citizens; people who would otherwise have been admitted without issue.

More likely, the Home Office advice about additional identity checks would only become relevant if the dual national said something that disqualified them from entry as a visitor, for example, if they declared they were coming to work.

Will ETAs issued to dual nationals still be valid?

None of this should be construed as advice to dual nationals to travel to the UK using an ETA from 25 February, or to apply for one now. And indeed the latter course is now impossible. The app asks the user to “Add any other nationalities you have, including any you have had in the past”. But with ‘British citizen’ having been quietly removed from the resulting dropdown menu in the last few days, this means that users must at this point stop the process, on pain of submitting false data in a government form which is inadvisable on any view.

As for those ETAs already issued to dual nationals, the rules do not provide for their cancellation in these circumstances. Appendix Electronic Travel Authorisation provides that an ETA may be cancelled where it has been issued and one of the specified validity requirements was not met at the time of application or subsequently (ETA 5.8). But the validity rules do not require that the applicant is not a British citizen.

Nor does the enabling statutory power. Appendix Electronic Travel Authorisation sits within the immigration rules, and in general these are made by the Home Secretary in accordance with sections 1(4) and 3(2) of the 1971 Act. The latter provides that they lay down the practice to be followed in regulating the entry into and stay of persons “required by this Act to have leave to enter”. But because an ETA is an authorisation to travel to the UK, rather than relating to entry to or remaining in it, a new statutory power was needed.  This was brought about by sections 11C & 11D Immigration Act 1971 (as inserted by the 2022 Act). These sections do not limit their application to those who require leave to enter.

Section 11C(3) provides that the relevant immigration rules may not “… impose this [ETA] requirement” on a British citizen, or an individual who would be entitled on arrival in the UK to enter without leave (e.g. Irish citizens). But this is a restriction on the operation of the immigration rules, and indeed the rules do not impose such a requirement.

There is nothing in sections 11C or 11D of the Act providing that an ETA granted to a dual national is not valid or liable to be cancelled. Moreover, section 11C(6)(g) states that the relevant immigration rules must specify the grounds on which an ETA must or may be cancelled, implying that the cancellation grounds set out in Appendix Electronic Travel Authorisation must be exhaustive.

Against this, given that an ETA is granted under the immigration rules, and the existence of those rules generally owes to the power under sections 1(4) and 3(2) of the 1971 Act, it may be argued that the power in sections 11C and 11D does not extend the rules to cover British citizens. But this strikes me as weak tea.

What can be done?

The looming ETA enforcement date has already deeply antagonised dual national British citizens living abroad. That cohort is large and their goodwill is a significant part of the UK’s international reach.

The Home Office’s decision to remove the British citizenship option from the app seems odd and may increase ETA applications from dual nationals, many of whom would have happily declared their British citizenship but had no way to do so, as the form contains no free text field.

A simpler solution would be to allow dual nationals to (continue to) apply for and hold ETAs. A joint letter from ILPA, British in Europe and the 3million on 17 February primarily proposes a delay, but also proposes to allow such ETA applications from British citizens for a transitional period. This would be under a bespoke legal instrument (to give the requisite certainty) and be subject to a commitment by the individual to subsequently apply for a British passport or certificate of entitlement.

Since many dual nationals already hold ETAs that – as suggested above – should remain valid, this is a sensible way out.

You can contact Alex and Constantine Law’s immigration team here.