Illegal Migration Bill

Lord Kirkhope of Harrogate Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 24th May 2023 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Hailsham (Con)]

My Lords, I have only a very brief intervention to make, but I want to speak to Amendment 4. I have two questions for the Minister which I think require serious clarification. First, do the Government accept that the Bill, if enacted, should be implemented in such a way as to comply with the convention rights that are itemised in Amendment 4? We are entitled to know what the thinking of the Government is. Do they intend that the Bill, if enacted, complies with convention rights?

The second question is contrariwise and actually is a suspicion. What is the purpose of the purpose test set out in Clause 1(2)? My suspicion is that the purpose test is designed to displace the convention rights if they come up against the Bill, if enacted. In other words, is the purpose test designed to override convention rights? I think this House is entitled to a very direct answer on both those questions.

For myself, let me make this absolutely plain to the Government. If Amendment 4 is put to a vote at any stage, I shall vote for it, because I believe that this Government and this country should comply with convention rights. If the purpose test is designed to override convention rights, I shall vote against it if given the chance.

[Lord Kirkhope of Harrogate (Con)]

My Lords—

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords—sorry, we have had quite a lot of Tories, have we not?

[Lord Kirkhope of Harrogate (Con)]

I am sorry, my Lords. I want to indicate that I think all of us in this Chamber wish, as the Government put it, to stop the boats. We all want to stop the suffering of people who are coming to this country in a particular manner at the moment. I am sure those of us proposing amendments all have that very much in our minds.

I support Amendment 4, which bears my name and others, and very much support what the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, said about it. I refer to my entry in the register of interests as a lawyer and a former Immigration Minister, and I have real concerns about any legislation that appears to threaten the important laws or agreements in place and signed in international forums by this country. I know that there are those who take a divided view between domestic law and international law. There are those who regard treaties, international agreements and conventions which bear the signature of the UK as being less important, and inconvenient when the Government and others promote domestic policies. However, if the Government wish to either disregard or, worse, discard, these obligations, I find that fundamentally unacceptable, and I hope that my noble friend, at least, as a fellow lawyer, would agree.

The Home Secretary has stated that there would be no problem in pursuing her new ideas. Apparently, she stated that she had consulted and secured the support of “the finest legal minds in the country”. As my noble friend knows, I asked at Second Reading whether he would list these minds, in case I wished to pursue some briefing or instruction, but I failed to get an answer to that, so he now has a further opportunity to let us know who the Home Secretary was referring to. The eminent lawyers I have consulted seem fairly confident, as was said by the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, that no asylum seeker can per se be described as illegal, and this worries me intensely.

At the Reykjavík summit last week, which was referred to earlier, a declaration was signed by all the participating states, including us, which stated great support for the international conventions. It said:

“We recall the increasing challenges of migration and the necessity to fight against trafficking and smuggling of migrants”.


I am sure we all agree with that.

“We commit to intensifying efforts to foster and improve international co-operation in this regard, while continuing to protect the victims and respect the human rights of migrants and refugees, as well as supporting frontline States, within the existing Council of Europe frameworks”.


I could not agree more—and, as I said, it was signed by the United Kingdom. It called for

“building a European legal community of shared values”.

That is something we should all agree with too.

It also referred to the Venice commission, which was referred to by my honourable friend the Member for Henley, John Howell, while this matter was before the other place. It is a legal body that is equipped to deal with interpretation of concerns over conventions, and the rule of law checklist is an inherent function of that body. That reference is important, in my opinion. As has been mentioned, our Prime Minister was very clear in his remarks at the end of that meeting. He was talking about how and why it was so important that our work with our friends on the continent went on to support the

“values of freedom, democracy and the rule of law”.

So I am confident—in fact, I am sure—that my noble friend will not only accept the amendment but will embrace the opportunity it provides to restate this country’s important position in the rule of law and our international relations. Those principles are so important.

I finish my remarks by pointing out that the amendment exemplifies our nation’s traditional unwavering dedication to upholding international law and being part of the development of international law. That is terribly important. By supporting the amendment, we reiterate our commitment to fairness, compassion and the respect for human rights, while remaining cognisant of the complexities and sensitivities surrounding the issue, of which we are all aware. By upholding these principles, we also strengthen our global standing, and that is surely something we ought to embrace ourselves. Whether or not the Minister embraces some of the things we are suggesting, I want to embrace that situation for our country.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, I apologise to the noble Lord, Lord Kirkhope. It was an excess of enthusiasm in coming in after the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, and actually agreeing with him on something. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Kirkhope, as well.

At first glance, this looks like an illegal Bill; it certainly looks as if it violates international law and suspends the Human Rights Act. Before I came into the Chamber today, I took some legal advice from a very fine legal mind—apparently a very sought-after Silk—and I was assured that the Bill is not unconstitutional or illegal. I would like to take another opinion on that because, quite honestly, I do not believe it. Even if it is legal—which I do not accept—it violates so many principles that you have to ask: how can we not be ashamed to let a Bill like this go through? It is all very well talking about legalities, but there are also such things as embarrassment and humiliation, particularly on the world stage. I think that is what the Bill offers, as other noble Lords have said.

What we are seeing, not just in this Bill but in other Bills, is the removal of our rights—all sorts of rights: parliamentary rights but also human rights in wider society. We have to be very careful about that. We, in many ways, are seen as the last bastion of humanity and respectability out there. People constantly say to me now, “We really thought the House of Lords was a complete waste of time, but we’ve changed our minds”. It is because we have been fighting this Government and trying to say to them that this is wrong. I think we have to say that this Bill is wrong.

The Government have tried to make us focus on other people. They have othered a lot of people: migrants, trade unions, even nurses, and of course protesters. They are trying to make us think we are providing solutions with a Bill like this, but we are not. We are not stopping the boats. We are not solving any problems with this Bill; we are creating more problems. I support all the amendments in this group. Amendment 3 is too cautious and I would like to see it strengthened, but Amendment 4 is very clear and strong.

Albanian Asylum Seekers

Lord Kirkhope of Harrogate Excerpts

Tuesday 13th December 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)]

On the BNO Hong Kong cohort, I do not have the answer, and I will write to the noble Lord in relation to it.

[Lord Kirkhope of Harrogate (Con)]

My Lords, I am very pleased that the Government have reached an agreement with Albania about the large number of Albanians arriving in this country. However, I dispute slightly what my noble friend said about the legality or illegality of asylum seekers. Under the 1951 convention, it is perfectly clear that merely seeking asylum cannot in itself be an act of illegality. It is, however, obvious to all of us, I think, that the illegality about which we are so concerned lies with the people traffickers, smugglers and those forcing often very poor people to come to this country. I urge my noble friend that we must take further action to alleviate that problem.

[Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)]

I entirely agree with my noble friend: the 1951 convention prohibits the penalisation of asylum seekers. It is the illegal entry—entry without leave—that renders it unlawful under the Act.

X-Rays: Child Refugees

Lord Kirkhope of Harrogate Excerpts

Tuesday 6th December 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)]

The international experience would tend to suggest that that is not the case. The position adopted by the department is that age assessment is one option on a menu of options available for the assessment of age; there is no suggestion that the assessment of age will be undertaken, at this stage and in the present state of the science, simply on a scientific assessment.

[Lord Kirkhope of Harrogate (Con)]

Would my noble friend the Minister not agree with me that this has been a problem for a considerable period of time? When I was in the Home Office, we also had difficulties with this matter, but the rules are quite clear: minors are entitled to support in a way that those who are overage are not. So, although it is regarded as being rather unfair to use X-rays, and maybe even dangerous, does my noble friend not agree that at least we have to apply those rules and find ways of applying them that are as fair as possible?

[Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)]

I entirely agree with my noble friend. I can assure the House that we will ensure that scientific methods are implemented in such a way as to be compliant with the existing regulatory and statutory frameworks governing safety. I entirely agree with the sentiment of my noble friend’s question.

Metropolitan Police: Misconduct

Lord Kirkhope of Harrogate Excerpts

Wednesday 19th October 2022 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Hailsham (Con)]

My Lords—

[Lord Kirkhope of Harrogate (Con)]

My Lords, my noble friend has just rightly said that action should be taken. I think we all agree that those who transgress the high standards in public office should be dealt with and that lessons should be learned. However, is it not also right for us to acknowledge that the vast majority of serving police officers, men and women, serve this country with the highest levels of probity and public service, for which we should be enormously grateful?

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

I could not agree more with my noble friend and I am grateful for the opportunity to pay tribute to the vast majority of our police men and women in the Met and indeed across the whole country. They do a very difficult and often thankless job in often very difficult conditions, and they do it to a very high standard. I thank my noble friend for the opportunity to say that, and I thank those officers. I am sure that they are equally upset by this report’s findings.

Spousal Visas: Processing Times

Lord Kirkhope of Harrogate Excerpts

Tuesday 21st June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

The noble Baroness underlines that to have the Ukrainian visa scheme as a priority is absolutely the right thing to do.

[Lord Kirkhope of Harrogate (Con)]

My Lords, my noble friend has answered a question on the length of time for inquiries to be made and for decisions to be taken. This appears to be the case throughout administration in relation to passports, as well as in relation to these matters. If we are now going to totally rely on the number of weeks in which we have to deal with matters, surely we are at risk of cutting corners. Is it not really rather important that we be more concerned with the thoroughness and fairness of the examination that takes place before a decision is taken?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

My noble friend is absolutely right. Of course, those thorough processes were some of the things that noble Lords were asking us to cut corners on right at the beginning of this process. We have not, and we are proud of the thoroughness of our processes.

Migration and Economic Development Partnership with Rwanda

Lord Kirkhope of Harrogate Excerpts

Wednesday 15th June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kirkhope of Harrogate (Con)]

My noble friend knows my unhappiness with this provision. Indeed, I moved amendments in Committee on the nationality Bill to try to remove offshoring. As a former Immigration Minister, I revealed then that I looked at the possibility of offshoring asylum applications some years ago. After considerable research, I came to the conclusion that it was not a good thing for this country to do.

I am a lawyer, though not in the same league as some of the other speakers today, and my understanding is that someone who claims asylum in a particular country is entitled to the matter being considered by the country in which they claim asylum. In offshoring the whole application, which is not made to the Rwandans but ends up in their hands, how are we complying with the 1951 convention and general international law?

Finally—I am sure that my noble friend will be aware of this—I am most surprised that, once an application has been considered in Rwanda and accepted there, this does not entitle an applicant who initially made that application in the UK to come back to this country. They have to remain in Rwanda, where they have not made any form of application whatever.

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

My noble friend refers to the long-standing inadmissibility rule, which states that the asylum seeker should claim asylum in the first safe country.

Ukrainian Asylum Seekers and Refugees

Lord Kirkhope of Harrogate Excerpts

Tuesday 7th June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Harrington of Watford (Con)]

I fully accept that those people could be a major asset to this or any other country. I am not aware of a separate policy for them. Of course, they could claim asylum as refugees and there are all the other routes to come into this country, but I will look into it.

[Lord Kirkhope of Harrogate (Con)]

My noble friend will no doubt remember the United Nations scheme for Bosnian refugees. I was the Minister responsible for that in the 1990s. Can my noble friend confirm whether the categories relating to Ukrainians coming here could have the support of the United Nations behind them, so that we have a scheme specifically put aside and the treatment of those people coming from Ukraine avoids some of the tougher things said recently by Ministers?

[Lord Harrington of Watford (Con)]

I reiterate what I have said before to my noble friend: we have a system for Ukrainian refugees to come to this country legitimately. It is my duty and honour to make sure that scheme works and that as many Ukrainians as possible fleeing the misery and all the terrible things happening there come here.

Nationality and Borders Bill

Lord Kirkhope of Harrogate Excerpts

Consideration of Commons amendments
Tuesday 26th April 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I rise with some hesitancy because I feel I am likely to be chastised for rambling, saying the wrong thing and going on too long. But let me see if I can entertain you.

I think that this is a very important and serious moment in a discussion on a very important and serious matter. I do not feel that this Bill will resolve it. I have been critical throughout on a range of issues and I feel that the Government have wasted opportunities —but I am not going to remind noble Lords of that.

At this point in the passage of the Bill, having listened to the considerations in the other place, we should recognise with a certain humility that the failure of the Government or Parliament to deal with the arrival by irregular routes of so many people is seen by so many citizens of this country as making a mockery of border control. This has led people to welcome the Rwanda solution as “At least somebody is trying to do something”. People will ask, “What would you do about the boats crossing the channel?” It is fair enough for people to say that, if something appears to be a deterrent, maybe we should try it.

As it happens, I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Horam, that there are not enough legal routes. I would like to open up a debate about more economic migration for unskilled workers. This might not go down well with my fellow citizens, but I should like to try to win that argument. I am fed up with having to describe people who want to come into this country as asylum seekers, when I know that many of them want a better standard of living—and why should they not have it? I defend them.

But we are not even having this debate. In this House, all the emphasis is on international obligations and the rule of law. There is little discussion about our obligations to the sovereignty of this country or the rights of British citizens of all ethnicities who worry about the fact that borders are not controlled. Perhaps I may remind noble Lords who are sighing that in a different context people are perfectly happy to grandstand about nation states, national sovereignty and the importance of border control—but that is only when you are talking about Ukraine. This is a different question.

On the Rwanda scheme, while I do not think that subcontracting our responsibilities to refugees to another country is against the nature of God, I actually do not like it. It is largely a cowardly decision. Despite what I have said, I would not choose this method. Over many years I have argued against such an approach, because I have always thought that any organisation that outsources or subcontracts its obligations on migration—particularly to heavily beleaguered countries—to police its borders on their behalf is washing their hands of a problem that they should tackle.

When I was criticising other places for doing this, I was criticising the EU—fortress Europe—which, for decades, has had a history of dumping asylum seekers on its non-EU neighbours. In 2016, the EU signed a deal with Turkey in exchange for £6 billion. President Erdoğan—that democrat—promised to stop Syrian refugees crossing the Turkish border into Greece and Bulgaria, and anyone found to have entered Greece was illegally deported to Turkey. The EU’s outsourcing of its migrant policy to, first, Colonel Gaddafi and, when he died, to warlords and militias or EU-funded Libyan detention centres has been a humanitarian disaster with torture and slavery at its heart. As it happens, Rwanda is not in that category, but I am always nervous about outsourcing to poor African countries that need the money; it seems unsavoury and cowardly. The reason these policies, which I feel avoid difficult problems, are greeted as they are by people is that they want something to be done. It equally avoids the problem and washes our hands of it to describe everyone in small boats as genuine refugees, and anyone who does not say that is seen as unkind. It also avoids the problem when you do not have an honest conversation about economic migration. It is equally cowardly and indulging in moral grandstanding to imply that “evil Tories” have turned into Nazis because they are actually putting forward a policy when no one knows what other policy to put forward. This does not help improve the level of debate about a very difficult situation.

Finally, and briefly, I support Motion D1, on the right to work, because it is ridiculous that we do not encourage people to have the right to work. In this instance, when the Government say that all claims should be settled within six months, I say to them: if they could get all the claims of the tens of thousands of people settled in a matter of months, we might not have a crisis where people say, “Bring in the Rwanda situation”. The claims go on and on for years and no one really trusts the processes to be done efficiently by Home Office civil servants in the background—no disrespect intended—so people sit around unproductively for years. For those who think that this would mean that they might undermine the wages and salaries of British citizens and workers, which is always a concern, let me tell noble Lords that, when they are sitting around for months and years, most are working but they are just working on the black market. That is perfectly legitimate because we will not let them work responsibly. Alternatively, if they are not working, they are sitting around doing nothing for years and years. That is not a very positive contribution to the UK, even if you are going to ask them to leave after their asylum status has been assessed eventually. I urge the Government, in this instance, to reconsider.

[Lord Kirkhope of Harrogate (Con)]

My Lords, I feel it necessary to say a few words because I was the Member responsible for bringing the amendments on offshoring to the House’s attention. I do not intend to make another Second Reading speech, because this not Second Reading. I do not intend to repeat the speech I gave when I introduced amendments in Committee. I am still opposed to the whole question of offshoring, particularly to Rwanda, for the reasons I have already given. I believe that it is inappropriate, legally dubious and very expensive, and I do not believe that it will have the effect, as is argued, of deterring the traffickers who should be dealt with in a harsh manner.

The other end of this place has twice now made it very clear that it does not support the wisdom that has come from this House. There is a constitutional issue here. Ping-pong is what it is; I believe that the will of the other place will prevail. As we have argued so forcefully, the responsibility for these actions must be laid squarely now on the shoulders of our friends in the other place—the Conservative MPs in particular and the Government—and, on that basis, I rest my position.

[Lord Green of Deddington (CB)]

I shall be extremely brief, noble Lords will be glad to hear. I should just like to draw attention to the state of public opinion, which is amazed by people arriving on our beaches in their tens of thousands. It was 30,000 last year; it could be double that this year. The public do not like it and they are right. It is very bad for the Government’s reputation. It is not so good for the Opposition either, in that the political system is failing to deal with an obviously very serious question.

The only way to deal with it is to break the business model of the traffickers. The Rwanda proposal is very far from ideal but for the present we have no alternative. I have to say, therefore, that it has my reluctant support.

UK-Rwanda Asylum Partnership Arrangement

Lord Kirkhope of Harrogate Excerpts

Monday 25th April 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

My Lords, the Prime Minister announced it last week; I do not think that there was an attempt to sneak anything through. The Home Secretary stood in the House of Commons last week and made a Statement about it.

[Lord Kirkhope of Harrogate (Con)]

My Lords, my noble friend knows that this is a very controversial area of the Nationality and Borders Bill. I have moved amendments to the Bill, and we have had long debates on this subject. Another Minister indicated that no further legislation would be required to proceed with these arrangements. Can my noble friend confirm that that is the case? Is she saying that the Nationality and Borders Bill is required, or is it the Government’s position that no legislation is required?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

My noble friend is right on two counts. First, the provision is in long-standing legislation dating from 1999, 2002 and 2004. Under the Bill, the certification process would not be needed, so essentially the policy could proceed with or without the legislation.

Nationality and Borders Bill

Lord Kirkhope of Harrogate Excerpts

Lords Hansard - Part 2 & Committee stage
Thursday 27th January 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Warsi (Con)]

My Lords, I support the amendment in the name of my noble friend Lord Moylan and the intention of the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, to oppose Clause 9; I have added my name to both. I also lend my support to all other amendments in this group. We should support anything that allows us to think again, row back and reset in an area that has developed in ways that we could not have envisaged, and take any opportunity to put it right.

The consequences of Clause 9 are, once again, incremental changes but with far-reaching consequences. I do not intend to rehearse the arguments I made at Second Reading on the history of the state’s power to strip UK citizens of their citizenship. I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Moylan, the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, and the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, for comprehensively and clearly stating the history of this issue, the background, the policy, the changes and its impact.

Each change has been sold by successive Governments as small, incremental, narrow and necessary. But each change has widened further the net of who, how and why the state can strip our fellow countrymen and women of their right. Clause 9 removes the requirement for the Secretary of State to notify someone when they are being deprived of their citizenship in a broad range of loosely defined circumstances, including when it does not appear to be “reasonably practicable”. I am grateful to my noble friend for her recent correspondence, but I am afraid it provides little justification for this change, as the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, said.

Today I want to make three points. The Government have stripped hundreds of citizens of their citizenship over the last decade. Indeed, as recently as 2017, we heard that over 100 people were stripped of it in one year alone. The requirement for notice was, of course, fulfilled in all those cases. The lack of a Clause 9 power did not prevent the Government acting in hundreds of cases. The case of D4, which has been mentioned by other noble Lords, was what led to this clause at the 11th hour, with little debate in the Commons. To help the Committee understand the rationale behind this clause, can my noble friend start by publishing in a single document the numbers of people deprived, the reasons for the deprivation and the ethnicities of those deprived from, say, 1981 to 2010 and 2010 to date?

Secondly, I want to talk about stripping someone of their citizenship. It strips them of their right to live in their country and of their home, their job and their right to family. It often deprives them of the only place they know and forces them to find another place in the world that may or may not accept them—often a place with which they have little if any connection and where their life may be at risk.

Clause 9 seeks to do this without even notifying the person of such a radically life-altering decision. This in reality removes the person’s right to challenge the decision, the basis of it, the accuracy of the facts on which it was based or, indeed, even whether the person stripped is the right person. My noble friend’s explanation in her letter, I am afraid, goes no further in giving any reassurance that appeal rights will be preserved with Clause 9. As the Constitution Committee said in its report on the Bill:

“The House may conclude that this clause is unacceptable and should be removed from the Bill.”


Thirdly, I want to move to a fundamental principle that we are equal before the law, entitled to equal protection and equal treatment. I think the whole Committee can agree on that. In this country, we legislate for what is a crime and publish the law, including sentencing guidelines. If we break the law, we know the consequences that will follow—and follow equally for all citizens. Yet it seems that these fundamental principles are now being eroded.

So perhaps I may ask my noble friend: if an act, a crime, carries the penalty and sentence of citizenship being stripped, should it apply to anyone convicted of that crime? Do my noble friends on the Front Bench agree that sentencing should be linked to crime, not where your grandparents or great-grandparents were born, and that a sentence should not change based on heritage or race? If my noble friends agree with that principle, they will think again and, I hope, before Report they will strike Clause 9 from the Bill, because to do anything else would mean that we further the appalling situation in which we find ourselves now in Britain that seeks to sentence predominately a minority black and brown community differently from the majority white community. Yes, that is hard to listen to, but it should disgust and disturb us in this House.

Being a citizen of this country means that, when you commit a crime, you are arrested, tried and convicted by our laws and our courts. I therefore disagree with the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett. I accept that it is hard for him to revisit his time, but it is punishment and cannot be protection, as he says it is. If the laws, as he says, were brought in as a response to the challenge of terrorism and an international terrorist franchise, surely that required an international response. So how will dumping our citizens who have shown support for that international franchise in another country—likely with less resources—protect us? I would argue that it makes us all less safe.

Finally, this clause has had a chilling effect in our country. It has provoked debates in homes in settled, established communities such as mine and those of other noble Lords. I want to mention a very personal story. When I was growing up, there were two things I remember acutely. The first was a Hitachi case containing everyone’s papers, passports and naturalisation certificates. When anything happened in our home, for example if we moved, that Hitachi case was rescued first, because the fear was real that, without that case, we might be asked to leave.

The story that I heard from my parents was this. My dad is an optimistic guy who always thought that he would build a house in the north of Pakistan in the way that many of us dream of having a villa in the south of Spain. But my mum, like many women, was more realistic and cynical. She worried that one day we would be asked to leave and go back home. I did not envisage that here I would be at 50, not quite dreaming my dad’s dream but definitely worrying my mum’s worry.

So I say to my noble friend that opposition to this clause is widespread. Most of our inboxes are full of briefings and correspondence. The clause is broadly opposed in this Committee. Today we have seen the House at its best; across it and across political divides we have had noble Lords raising their concerns. So I hope that my noble friend will think again before Report.

[Lord Kirkhope of Harrogate (Con)]

My Lords, I want to say just a few words because I have listened very carefully, looked at all these amendments and heard some extremely good speeches from colleagues on all sides of the House. However, I am a former Immigration Minister and, looking back at legislation that I was involved in in the 1990s, there were certain Bills in which clauses came forward, we looked at amendments and, frankly, we concluded that, however good the amendments were, the clauses were unamendable and should be removed when they were not effective and where it had been clearly shown that they would have had bad effects.

I am grateful to those who have moved or spoken to their amendments, but I can think of few proposals that can offend as widely and as profoundly as the removal of people’s citizenship. Clause 9, sadly—to me, anyway, as a lawyer—is an affront to our common law, to international legal standards and understandings, and to our various human rights commitments. Critically, it could have appalling consequences for those affected.

As I stated at Second Reading, stripping people of their citizenship—secretly and unilaterally, on vaguely defined grounds such as “in the public interest”—exposes us to actions that fall short of our normal democratic standards, both at home and abroad. It also predicates many legal proceedings.

We all know that the first rule of government is to protect our citizens. I took that very seriously then, as I do know. Clause 9 would place already vulnerable people at greater risk. There are plenty of examples of this. A person may be deported to a country where capital punishment is practised, or where other inhumanities might present themselves. This proposal could hardly be described as protective, as it would open us up to accusations of double standards, which would undermine our efforts to speak out against issues such as the death penalty or cruel and inhumane practices elsewhere.

The UK has a very good and proud record of calling out injustice when it applies to other countries that show a lack of respect for human rights and international standards. At times—not often, but occasionally—we are also good at sporting spurious justifications to mask unsavoury policies. I fear that this clause would grant the UK the same sort of cover and ability to employ the same sorts of excuses to enforce policies that are otherwise indefensible and might be misused.

Citizenship is a valuable status and a clear constitutional right. The issue of revocation is, therefore, to be taken seriously. Any attempt by the state to withdraw an individual’s citizenship must have a clear and robust basis in law. It must assert the primacy of due process, including the right of appeal. Above all, it must be transparent, where the basic rights of notification of action to a subject are followed.

I fear that Clause 9 will create a process that is arbitrary and fundamentally unjust. That is why it should not be supported. I hope that my noble friend can rectify the situation before Report. I listened particularly to the noble Lord, Lord Anderson of Ipswich. He was quite correct; it is very difficult to see that any form of amendment could put this clause right.

[Lord Macdonald of River Glaven (CB)]

My Lords, it is important to situate Clause 9 within the breadth of our immigration law as it stands. For obvious reasons, deprivation powers available to a Secretary of State to strip a person of their British citizenship were historically very tightly drawn indeed. In 2003, 2006, 2014 and 2018, these powers were significantly expanded. They may now be exercised in relation to any British citizen who is a dual national—including British citizens from birth—where the Secretary of State is satisfied that deprivation is conducive to the public good.

If we want to grasp how broad a power that is and how broad are its implications, we need only recall what the Supreme Court said in the Begum case last year—that this includes a situation where the person does not even know that they are a dual national and where they have little or no connection with the country of their second nationality.

The power can also be exercised in relation to naturalised British citizens even where they are not dual nationals if the Secretary of State is satisfied that the conducive to the public good test is passed because the person has acted in a manner seriously prejudicial to the vital interests of the UK. If the Secretary of State has a reasonable belief that the person is able to become a national of another country and that belief turns out to be unfounded, the individual will become stateless.

The leading immigration law silk, Raza Husain, has said:

“This progressive extension over the last two decades has meant that it is no longer necessary to demonstrate that someone is a terrorist or a traitor before stripping them of British citizenship. Individuals may be deprived of citizenship on general public interest grounds of the sort usually invoked to justify deportation, rather than on the basis of their severing the bonds of allegiance that are the hallmark of nationality.”


It is no doubt because of the lowering of these procedural safeguards that the exercise of deprivation of citizenship is now relatively common. In the period from 1973 to 2002, there were no deprivation orders at all. I am told that, since 2011, the power has been used in at least 441 cases, with 104 in 2017 alone. Of course, Clause 9 has the potential very significantly to increase the use of this power. The noble Baroness, Lady Mobarik, has spoken very compellingly about the disproportionate impact that this will inevitably have on non-white British citizens.