UK Citizenship

Debate between Jim Sheridan and Diane Abbott

Tuesday 11th February 2014 Westminster Hall

[Ms Abbott]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. In saying that, I am accepting an argument that I do not really support, namely that somehow, because someone is alleged to be a terrorist, that makes them a terrorist. Even if we accept that logic, we will not be making the country any safer, because we cannot move such people on anywhere.

Statelessness is a notion that the British Government were trying to move away from for a long time. In 1930, Britain was among the first to ratify the convention on certain questions relating to the conflict of nationality, which included a protocol relating to certain cases of statelessness. The universal declaration of human rights, which was adopted by the UN General Assembly with UK support as far back as 1948, says:

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

yet that is what clause 60 of the Immigration Bill seeks to do.

Deprivation of citizenship is a severe sanction and statelessness is a separate and even more brutal punishment with unique practical and legal consequences. Although it is an aspiration of human rights activists that fundamental rights such as the right to life and the prohibition on torture should attach to all human beings, the reality is that we live in a world deeply divided along national borders, in which it is notoriously difficult to access redress for, or protection on, human rights matters without nationality.

Going further forward, the UN convention on the reduction of statelessness, which is where we are supposed to be going, was adopted in 1961 and ratified by the UK in 1966. It stipulates that, absent circumstances of fraudulent application or disloyalty toward the contracting state, deprivations and renunciations of citizenship will take effect only where a person has or subsequently obtains another nationality in replacement. The clause moves away from that. This country has spent a generation trying to move away from statelessness, but we are now going in reverse.

We may not have seen the end of this matter; that is why the other place should look at the provision. We had the Home Secretary saying that citizenship was a privilege, not a right, but citizenship is a fact. During the same debate, Alok Sharma MP—

[Jim Sheridan (in the Chair)]

Order. It would be preferable to mention hon. Members not by name, but by their constituency.

[Ms Abbott]

The hon. Member for Reading West (Alok Sharma) raised with the Home Secretary the question of whether we could extend the stripping away of citizenship from naturalised citizenship. He said:

“I am a naturalised British citizen and the clause therefore applies to me. I support it wholeheartedly…Perhaps my right hon. Friend should go even further…and introduce similar sanctions against anyone who is British, irrespective of how they got British citizenship”.

The Home Secretary responded:

“My hon. Friend makes an important point about…the desire that we have in the House to ensure that we can take appropriate action against people who are acting in a manner that is not conducive to the public good”.—[Official Report, 30 January 2014; Vol. 574, c. 1042.]

One of the problems with the new clause is that it opens the door to further arbitrary deprivation of citizenship. It must be wrong in principle to create two classes of citizenship. It is wrong in practice because it will create a class of stateless people who, in practice, cannot be moved out of the UK. It seems that the coalition Government introduced the clause as a short-term strategy to see off a related but separate clause covering the ability of foreign criminals to resist deportation on the grounds that they have a right to family life. I suggest that the civil liberties of British citizens are too important to be tampered with for short-term political advantage.

Coming as I do from a family in which many members of my parents’ generation obtained British citizenship through naturalisation, and representing as I do a part of London where many of my constituents obtained British citizenship through naturalisation, I am naturally wary of any move to create two classes of British citizenship, as that could affect so many of my constituents and even members of my family. The clause was thought up in a hurry, and as with so much legislation that is thought up in a hurry, it is deeply flawed. I sincerely hope that when Members of the other place consider it, they will take it out of the Bill.