Question to the Cabinet Office:

To ask His Majesty's Government what is their current estimate of the number of UK dual nationals; whether those estimates include a breakdown of the countries in which they are currently resident; and how many are resident in the other state in which they also hold citizenship.

The information requested falls under the remit of the UK Statistics Authority.

Please see the letter attached from the National Statistician and Chief Executive of the UK Statistics Authority.

The Rt Hon. the Lord Wallace of Saltaire

House of Lords

London

SW1A 0PW

20 December 2023

Dear Lord Wallace,

As National Statistician and Chief Executive of the UK Statistics Authority, I am responding to your Parliamentary Question asking for the current estimate of the number of UK dual nationals; whether those estimates include a breakdown of the countries in which they are currently resident; and how many are resident in the other state in which they also hold citizenship (HL1310).

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) conducted the 2021 Census in England and Wales.

In order to answer your question, the ONS examined census ‘passports held’ data. Table 1 shows the number of dual passport holders resident in England and Wales.

Table 1: Number of dual passport holders resident in England and Wales

Source: Census 2021 (21 March 2021)

For similar data for Northern Ireland and Scotland, please contact the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency [1] (NISRA) and National Records of Scotland [2] (NRS) respectively.

As the Census collected data only from people currently resident in England and Wales at the time of collection, the ONS have no data identifying dual passport holding citizens residing outside England and Wales. This means we are unable to answer the second and third aspects of your question.

As the ONS continues its programme of transforming population and migration statistics, we will explore how to provide additional detail to meet user needs. This will include the possibility of obtaining an estimate of dual citizenship using administrative data as part of that programme.

Yours sincerely,

Professor Sir Ian Diamond

[1] https://www.nisra.gov.uk/

[2] https://www.nrscotland.gov.uk/