UK passport - frustrating situation

One of my relatives' girlfriend has never had a UK passport. She's in her early/mid-20s and wants to go abroad, but she's in a weird situation because she's adopted and her parents (I presume her adoptive parents) won't or can't give her the documents she needs.
The IPS says:

If you were born in the UK on or after 1 January 1983, IPS needs to see your UK national identity card or your full birth or adoption certificate showing your parents' details and one of the following:

* your mother's UK birth certificate, Home Office certificate of registration or naturalisation, or her passport that was valid at the time of your birth
* your father's UK birth certificate, Home Office certificate of registration or naturalisation, or his passport that was valid at the time of your birth and your parents' marriage certificate

IPS may ask for further documents relating to your parents.

They won't give her their marriage certificate, they don't have passports, and they don't know where their birth certs are. I expect in theory you can apply to get birth certs replaced but sounds like this won't happen. She seems to have a really odd relationship with her parents (she lives with them, I think, but they won't let her be in the house alone if they go away even though she's an adult). Is there any way around this that doesn't involve relying on unco-operative parents?
My relative just says "It's just what they are like". I could understand if you need all that for a child passport but for an adult? Can she apply for copies of their birth certificate by herself?

That's a tricky one. If she knows enough information about the parents then she could order one of their birth certificates through the General Registry office. My dad did this researching family history. You'd have to check to see if this is valid for the passport. I would guess that enough people loose their passports so it would have to be, but who knows.

yep: http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/Governmentcitizensandrights/Registeringlifeevents/Familyhistoryandresearch/Birthmarriageanddeathcertificates/DG_175628

What certificates are available?
All certificates are exact copies of the full record made at the time of the birth, marriage or death.

you can order them online at gro.gov.uk.

Thanks... so you can order anyone's birth certificate if you know enough about them? It never actually occurred to me that that would be possible! I've passed on the info.

pretty sure i know the answer to this, but you can't enter spain from the UK (and vice versa) on just a UK driver's license, right? you need a passport.

Well

As an EU national, you can enter the UK, or indeed any other EU country, on presentation of your official German identity card. You do not need to present your passport.

A driving license wouldn't be valid ID though.

ich bin kein Deutsche und ich habe keiner deutscher Ausweis xp

basically this is a fuck up on my part involving my UK passport being in possession of the US state department while i am in the UK next month

You might as well ring the consulate to double check but UK driving licenses aren't biometric and I am 99.9% sure Spain would require a passport.

thanks

is there an official UK identity card though? the text I posted was from a .eu site, not just for Germans (yeah I know)

no there isn't an official uk id card - although it has been proposed.

in fact an act was passed by labour after the 2005 election, and repealed by the tories after the 2010.

http://www.ryanair.com/en/terms-and-conditions/regulations-traveldocumentation suggests not

mrs macs dad lost his passport twixt airport and watford

just noting it because lol

I've just received a two-year, multiple-entry visa for China, which is great. Sadly, it takes up the last blank pages of my passport so i can't go to India, Russia or any other countries that require you to have at least two free.

I'm thinking of applying for a second UK passport to run concurrently with my existing one. From what i've read online, the process for doing this seems to be shrouded in a fair amount of mystery and sounds quite arbitrary as to who can successfully get one.

Has anyone here applied for a 'concurrent passport' and how much of a faff is it?

who maxes out their passport ffs oh wait it's you lol

did this get sorted btw

Sorry I didn’t see that. I had two concurrent passports for a while. All it took was a letter from my employer saying that I needed two passports, that I had a lot of travel coming up an needed to have one spare so I could have one in an embassy getting a visa whilst travelling on the other one. Worked just fine

Does the UK system allow you to get extra pages tacked on? You can do this with a US passport.

I filled up a passport because I lived next to the Macau border and they stamped it every time I went in or out, so 4 times per trip, easy to do.
UK do not do the extra pages thing. Have not heard of getting two passports apart from people with duel nationality.

Excellent, thanks both.

The guidance on renewing a passport might be helpful:
https://www.gov.uk/renew-adult-passport/renew

Specifically the section on unexpired visas - it suggests you "send your previous passport with the visa attached to it with your application. Your previous passport will be returned to you. You'll be able to use the visa if you carry both passports."

You might want to order a special 50-page passport while you're at it. My hunch is that the cost of renewing a passport will be no more than applying for a second one. From what I've read owning two passports is really only open to government employees or businesspeople who get it done through their place of work.

There's also an emergency travel document:
https://www.gov.uk/emergency-travel-document

One of the criteria is that "your passport has been lost, stolen, damaged, is full, has recently expired or is with HM Passport Office or a foreign embassy", but it seems you can only apply if you're outside the UK, it costs £100, and it sounds scary.