Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Damian Green and Naomi Long

Monday 12th September 2011 Commons Chamber

[Damian Green]

I am sure the whole House will share my hon. Friend’s disgust at something that came as a shock to many of us. He is right. What we saw was effective police action, co-ordinated in many ways by the Serious Organised Crime Agency. As he knows, the new national crime agency will have among its functions co-ordinating activity against trafficking, both domestic and international, which will give us a much more effective way of combating such particularly vile crime.

[Naomi Long (Belfast East) (Alliance)]

I have been contacted by a constituent who was born in Germany while her father, an Irish citizen, was stationed there with the British Army in 1948. Despite her mother being British, and the fact that she has lived the remainder of her life in the UK, she is a British subject, not a British citizen, which carries additional cost and inconvenience when she travels. Will the Home Secretary consider how to resolve that historic anomaly?

[Damian Green]

That sounds like a deliberate quiz question for the Immigration Minister, with every possible complication within it. If the hon. Lady wishes to write to me, I will happily examine the details of the case.