Foreign and Commonwealth office: Surrogacy Overseas wrote:
Under UK nationality law, the mother and father of a child are considered to be the woman who carries and gives birth to the child and her husband, i.e the man she is married to at the time of the child’s conception. In some countries, where same-sex marriage or civil partnership is legal, this may refer to the birth mother of the child and her same-sex spouse at the time of the child’s conception.
This means that even if your names appear on the local birth certificate, a baby born to a foreign national surrogate mother who is married will not be automatically eligible for British nationality. In this case you will need to first apply for Home Office registration of a child under 18 as a British citizen, before applying for a passport for the child.
If the surrogate mother is single or widowed/divorced then you do not need to apply for registration of the child and you can apply for a passport if the commissioning father is British, has a genetic link to the child and is able to pass on his nationality (e.g. is a British national otherwise than by descent).
You can find further information on this in the
Home Office guidance. Please note: This guidance was created in 2009 and as matters continue to evolve some aspects of the guidance may now be out of date. If you have any questions you should seek advice from a specialist UK immigration lawyer.
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Please note, it can take several weeks, if not months, to process applications for children born through surrogacy overseas and you should be prepared for an extended stay overseas once your child is born. The FCO does not handle passport applications and Embassies cannot expedite your application.
The FCO and Embassies are not ordinarily able to issue Emergency Travel Documents to children born through surrogacy overseas. The checks required
to determine nationality for children born through surrogacy must be carried out by Her Majesty’s Passport Office (as part of the passport application process) or UK Visas and immigration (as part of the nationality registration process).
