Nationality and Borders Bill

Debate between Henry Smith and Bambos Charalambous

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.

Foie Gras Imports

Debate between Henry Smith and Bambos Charalambous

Wednesday 13th June 2018 Commons Chamber

[Henry Smith]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We are perhaps guilty of a double standard, in that we are sometimes willing to export cruel practices to other countries. The same goes for a lot of fur production as well. It is out of sight and out of mind, but sadly, the cruelty still goes on.

The Prime Minister was right to say that our exit from the European Union must lead to wider changes in how our country works. From the conversations I have had with my own constituents and the correspondence I have received from them during the various stages of the legislation we have debated over the last two days, it is clear that ensuring that we have enhanced animal welfare provisions after we have left the EU is a priority for many people in Crawley, as it is up and down the country. Those representations are very much in my mind this evening, and as co-chair of the all-party parliamentary group for animal welfare, it is those calls that I will continue to pursue. Indeed, the ability of our country soon to take such decisions ourselves is an opportunity that we really must seize.

Polling has shown that under 10% of the public claim to consume foie gras and that there is overwhelming support for an import ban, with 77% of those who expressed an opinion supportive of a ban, as the hon. Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy) has just mentioned. I am pleased that the appetite for foie gras is decreasing in this country. Information from the Library shows that the value of UK imports of fatty livers of geese and ducks has fallen by almost half in recent years, from £1.1 million in 2013 to around £600,000 last year. The net mass of the livers that were imported also fell in that time, from some 150,000 kg to just over 100,000 kg. Foie gras is therefore not important to British culture or cuisine.

The Government’s position has been clear: that we are unable to ban the import of foie gras to the UK while we are a member of the European Union and customs union, due to the free movement of goods obligations. However, by leaving the single market, we will be able to decide for ourselves whether our country should take a different approach. The Farming Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Camborne and Redruth (George Eustice), stated earlier in the year that

“were the UK to commit to continue following the rules of the single market, as proposed by some, it would not be possible to consider a ban on foie gras imports.”

Indeed, the Government’s view is that an attempt to impose a unilateral ban on the import or sale of foie gras while we are still an EU member could be legally challenged as contravening provisions of the treaty on the functioning of the European Union. This country could then be referred to the Court of Justice of the European Union and face multiple damage claims from importers, exporters and other foie gras traders.

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

The hon. Gentleman refers to the fact that many people are voting with their feet by choosing not to eat foie gras. Does he agree that better education of the wider public would lead to fewer people eating foie gras once they learned of the disgusting practice of how the livers are obtained?

[Henry Smith]

The hon. Gentleman is right. Awareness is important on such issues, and it is one of the reasons behind this evening’s debate and behind the efforts to ensure that people are perhaps not disgusted, but definitely better informed about foie gras production.