Shamima Begum and Other Cases

Diane Abbott Excerpts

Monday 11th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Ms Diane Abbott (Hackney North and Stoke Newington) (Lab)]

(Urgent Question): To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department to make a statement on Shamima Begum, the death of her son Jarrah and other cases.

[The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Sajid Javid)]

We estimate that over 900 people left the UK to engage with the conflict in Syria and Iraq. Many have been killed fighting, some remain there, some have returned and others could still come back. Some irresponsibly took young British children with them, and some had children while they were there as part of their mission to expand the so-called caliphate. We have made it very clear since 2011 that no British citizen should travel to Syria. Those who have stayed until the bitter end include some of the most devoted supporters of Daesh. One of the ways we can deal with the threat that they pose to the UK is to remove British citizenship from those holding another nationality. Since 2010, this power has been applied to about 150 people of a range of nationalities.

It would not be appropriate for me to comment on the details of an individual case—although, clearly, the loss of any child is a tragedy—but, if I may, I will address some of the issues that have been raised. First, these decisions are made very carefully. Where citizenship deprivation is being considered for national security concerns, decisions are based on advice and intelligence from the security services, counter-terrorism police, and specialist security and legal officials in the Home Office. When people dedicated to keeping our country safe give an informed recommendation, any Home Secretary should listen very carefully. Secondly, we are unable to provide support to British nationals within Syria as the UK Government do not have a consular presence there. Thirdly, the status of a child does not change if their parents’ British citizenship is subsequently revoked.

There are no easy answers. I must also think about future conflicts and the precedents that we set. I do not want any more children brought into a war zone because their parents think that they will automatically be bailed out, no matter what the risk. However, the UK is doing all we can to help innocent people caught up in this conflict. We have committed £2.8 billion to Syria since 2012—our largest ever response to a single humanitarian crisis—and we are on track to resettle 20,000 vulnerable refugees who have fled the country, with our national resettlement programmes resettling more than any other EU member state in 2017.

Of course, I understand the public interest, so I have asked my officials to expedite the publication of our next transparency report on disruptive and investigatory powers, including the most up-to-date annual figures on the deprivation of citizenship. This Government remain committed to protecting our citizens around the world, but I will not shy away from using the powers at my disposal to protect this country.

[Ms Abbott]

When she was 15, Shamima Begum made a very bad decision, and it is arguable that much of the tragedy that has engulfed her since then flows from it. It is also the case that she has recently made some reprehensible statements to the media. However, the Home Secretary will know that the Opposition believe that she and her baby should have been allowed to return home. Now we know that that baby is dead. We believed that she should have been allowed to return home because this schoolgirl, born and brought up in Bethnal Green, was Britain’s responsibility. As it happens, that is also the general view of the President of the United States. Above all, bringing the mother and baby home would have given the baby a chance of life.

Instead, the Home Secretary, in the face of a media outcry, chose to strip Shamima of her citizenship. He knows that many authorities contend that that was done illegally, because she was not a dual national. Article 15 of the United Nations declaration of human rights states:

“Everyone has a right to a nationality. No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his nationality”.

Does the Home Secretary accept that the child was British? Does he further accept that the British legal system does not hold children responsible for the wrongdoing of their parents? Does he also accept that, despite what Ministers have said about the dangers of sending officials into the refugee camp, aid workers, doctors and journalists go backwards and forwards to and from those camps all the time?

Does the Home Secretary further accept that, by stripping Shamima of her nationality, he made it impossible for her to fulfil her duties as a mother and bring her baby home to a safe place? Will he confirm that, as he said earlier, as well as taking legal advice, he took advice from the police and security services about the desirability or otherwise of bringing Shamima home? Can he explain why he deemed this 19-year-old, with a baby that was not quite three weeks old, more dangerous to Britain than the hundreds of foreign fighters who have already been allowed to return?

We now know that there are other British women in those camps who have been stripped of their nationality by the Home Secretary’s predecessor, the right hon. Member for Hastings and Rye (Amber Rudd). Can he assure the House that he will work with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to see how best those British children’s rights can be protected?

The Home Secretary’s decision in this case has caused widespread concern and alarm. We understand the issue of keeping British people safe, but this was a British baby, who is now dead. No Opposition Member condones—[Interruption.]

[Mr Speaker]

Order. Mr Wallace, please, I respect your governmental responsibilities and the seriousness with which you take them, but I appeal to you just to listen to the exchanges. You can always look wise—that is not difficult for you—but it is best for you just to listen. As for the Parliamentary Private Secretary, Mr Hoare, you are a junior Member of the House, trying to come to terms with your responsibilities as a PPS. Your role is just to sit there and nod or shake your head in the appropriate place. It is not for you to give a running commentary on the shadow Home Secretary’s performance. I have not the slightest interest in what you have to say, and you will say no more in the course of these exchanges or I shall have to ask you to relocate yourself.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ms Abbott]

This is a very serious matter and it is unfortunate that Members on the Treasury Bench do not seem to take it with the seriousness it deserves. I say to the Home Secretary that no Opposition Member condones what Shamima Begum did—the choices she made and the things she said. But if it was his 19-year-old daughter, however badly she had behaved and however reprehensible or near criminal her choices, would he want her to bury three babies in the course of a year? The Home Secretary of course has a responsibility to protect the British public, but he also has a responsibility to appear just and fair in the eyes of the British public. This decision, which has led, as night follows day, to this less than three-week-old baby dying, does not appear just or fair to the majority of the British public.

[Sajid Javid]

First of all, the one thing I do concur with the right hon. Lady about is that the death of any child is a tragedy, wherever it takes place in the world. It is not something that anyone—any Member of this House—would want to see.

The Government are committed to protecting British citizens, but it is very different when it comes to a war zone where there is no consular presence. That is a fact not just under this Government; it has been a fact under successive Governments and it is true for many other European countries. For the same reasons that we do not have a consular presence, they do not have a consular presence. Whichever British citizen in that war zone in Syria the right hon. Lady might be referring to, whether a child or an adult, if there is no consular presence there is no way for British authorities—as much as someone might want to, especially in the case of a child—to provide any type of assistance.

The right hon. Lady is trying to make this issue about British citizenship. It is not about British citizenship. One confirmation I can give to one question she asked is that it is the case that if a child is born to someone who is a British citizen at the time the child is born, that child is a British citizen, even if the parent’s citizenship is subsequently removed. This is not about citizenship; it is about the ability of the British state to help. For the British state to send officials, whether Foreign Office officials or others, into Syria in a war zone would risk the safety of those officials. That is why the Foreign Office has been very clear, ever since 2011, that no British citizen should travel to Syria in any circumstances, because it is incredibly dangerous. That is the view taken on Syria by almost every other liberal democracy, even when it comes to children from their own countries and their own citizens.

The right hon. Lady suggested, on citizenship deprivations, that the Government are somehow making decisions that are making people stateless. She rightly stated that that would be illegal under international law. That means that no such decision can be made, whether by this Home Secretary, my predecessors, or previous Labour Home Secretaries. Under international law, no decision can be made unless the Home Secretary is satisfied, based on expert advice, that that individual will not be left stateless.

The death of any British child, even one born to a foreign terrorist fighter, is of course a tragedy, but the only person responsible for the death of that child is the foreign terrorist fighter.