Nationality and Borders Bill

Debate between Bambos Charalambous and Henry Smith

Report stage
Tuesday 7th December 2021 Commons Chamber

[Henry Smith]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for his support, and I agree with every word he said.

We have had over half a century of appalling injustice, in many different regards, for this community. It is now time that this House rights the wrongs that they have suffered. In allowing British overseas territories citizenship for the descendants of the Chagos Islanders, we can go a long way towards doing that. Chagos islanders were forcibly removed from their homeland not by this House but by an Order in Council. This issue has never had the proper scrutiny of this elected House, which can now play its part in righting a significant historical injustice. I therefore call on Members from across the House to support new clause 2.

[Bambos Charalambous (Enfield, Southgate) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the excellent speech by the hon. Member for Crawley (Henry Smith) in proposing new clause 2. I pay tribute to his commitment to this cause, which has been a long-standing one for him and his constituents. I wish to put on record the Opposition’s support for the new clause, which seeks to rectify the long-standing injustice in British nationality law that affects a relatively small number of people—Chagossian people, descendants of the Chagos islanders, who were forcibly removed from the British Indian Ocean Territory in the 1960s. The fact that British citizenship does not automatically pass to second and third generation Chagossians despite some of them migrating to the UK with their British parents as very young children is nothing short of a scandal. I hope that hon. Members on both sides of the House will support new clause 2.

Whereas the hon. Member for Crawley is seeking to rectify an injustice, the Nationality and Borders Bill does the opposite and seeks to create chaos and injustice. I will focus my comments on part 1. Clause 9 provides the Government with dangerous and unprecedented powers to deprive UK nationals of citizenship, without warning. We are wholeheartedly opposed to this. Through clause 9, the Government seek to amend the long-standing position under the British Nationality Act 1981 that an individual must be notified if they are to be deprived of their nationality. It exempts the Government from giving notice of a decision to deprive a person of citizenship if authorities do not have the subject’s contact details or if it is not “reasonably practical” to do so. The Government’s proposal also allows such secret deprivations to take place solely on the basis that the Home Office deems it “in the public interest” or in the interest of “foreign relations”. Effectively, this means that the Home Secretary can strip someone of their citizenship without informing them because it would be internationally embarrassing for her to do so. This abhorrent proposal therefore enables the Government to remove basic fairness, on top of an already dangerous power.

Like many measures in the Bill, there is no practical reason for this change. Present rules already allow for citizenship deprivation letters to be delivered to an individual’s last known address. The real purpose of this rule appears to be to introduce measures that remove the right to appeal. These measures make lawful previously unlawful citizenship stripping. They ask Parliament to pretend that an unlawful decision was lawful all along. It is shameful and Orwellian in equal measure.