British Citizenship Fees: Children

Deidre Brock Excerpts

Tuesday 4th September 2018 Westminster Hall

[Stuart C. McDonald]

The hon. Gentleman has been a champion of this cause on the Home Affairs Committee. I agree that there should be no fee for children who have been in the care system. The early-day motion that I tabled referred to that and I will address it momentarily.

The Minister met me and representatives from PRCBC and Amnesty to hear our arguments. I am grateful that she was willing to listen. I want to address some of the arguments the Home Office continues to use to justify the current fees regime.

First, the Home Office asserts that the fee reflects the benefit received by the child in being able to register. That totally misunderstands the situation. Parliament has decided that these kids should formally be British citizens—it was not a benevolent act of the Home Office. It is not any more legitimate to charge these citizens for the benefits they obtain as UK citizens than it would be to charge anyone in this Chamber or our own children. It seems the Home Office is conflating registration with the naturalisation of adults who choose to make the UK their home and ask for citizenship. That is totally different. Registration was put in place to compensate or to fill some of the gaps left by the end of citizenship by place of birth. The Home Office is subverting Parliament’s clear intentions by making it impossible to access those rights.

Secondly, the Home Office states that citizenship is not necessary—people can apply for leave to remain instead, which is an astonishing argument. How many hon. Members would be willing to give up their British nationality and settle for applying for leave to remain? There is no equivalence and it is outrageous to suggest that there is. That is particularly the case given that some of the kids affected would face a hellish path to settlement, which the Minister seems to be suggesting is a suitable alternative. Those not born here would require multiple applications at a cost of several thousand pounds on top of the cost to their wellbeing caused by the insecurity and stress of such a situation. It is not acceptable to say to someone whom Parliament says should be considered a British citizen, “Never mind, you can apply for leave to remain in your own country.”

Thirdly, the Home Office argues that it is fair for those using the immigration and nationality system to pay a contribution towards the broader costs of the immigration and nationality system, so that British taxpayers more generally do not have to. In some circumstances, I accept that that is true, but not here. The sum of money is not fair. As we have heard, it is huge and prohibitive, and we are talking about children. More fundamentally, these children are not migrants who chose to come in, but people entitled to citizenship. They were either born here or came here and grew up here without having had a choice.

[Deidre Brock (Edinburgh North and Leith) (SNP)]

I have a young constituent who has been refused citizenship after applying and her family paying that £1,012, despite the fact that her father is Scottish, she was born in Scotland and she has never lived anywhere else. Does my hon. Friend agree—developing the points he has been making—that it is difficult not to see this as profiteering by the UK Government to fund their hostile policies?

[Stuart C. McDonald]

I absolutely agree that it is profiteering. The Home Office tends to deny it is profiteering because it spends the money elsewhere, but the fact that profits are reinvested does not mean that they are not profits in the first place. It is outrageous to take the approach that the Home Office is suggesting. It is also contradictory, because it is saying that kids entitled to British citizenship should pay more so that other British citizens get to pay less. Both groups are British citizens. There is equivalence between them. The Home Office argument almost suggests that one form of citizenship is superior to another.

In conclusion, the Home Secretary has to all intents and purposes deprived far too many kids of their right in law to register as British by setting a fee for registering citizenship, which he has described as,

“a huge amount of money to ask children to pay”.

There are not even any fee waivers for those kids brought up in care, never mind a broader opportunity to apply for a reduction where the fee is unaffordable.