Nationality and Borders Bill

Lord Bishop of Gloucester Excerpts

Committee stage & Lords Hansard - Part 1
Thursday 27th January 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

My Lords, I shall speak to Amendment 13 in my name. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Alton of Liverpool, the noble Baroness, Lady Stroud, and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham—who cannot be here today—for their support. I support the other amendments in this group. I am grateful, too, to the Project for the Registration of Children as British Citizens, of which I am a patron, and to Amnesty International UK, for their help. Once again, I pay tribute to them for their continued work to promote children’s citizenship rights.

Essentially, the new clause would ensure that children are not excluded from their right to citizenship by registration by unaffordable fee levels, well above the cost of administering that right. It will also require action to raise awareness of this right.

It feels a bit like Groundhog Day. I have lost count of the number of times we have raised this issue in your Lordships’ House. Indeed, we are now known as “Terriers United”, although I do not think that all the terriers are able to be present today. On our last outing, during debate on the then Immigration and Social Security Co-ordination (EU Withdrawal) Bill of 2020, I warned the Minister that we would be snapping at the Home Office’s heels until we achieved justice for this vulnerable group of children.

I will recap the arguments briefly. We are talking about a group of children who were either born here to parents—neither of whom was, at that time, British or settled—or who have grown up here from an early age and have rights to register as British citizens. A combination of factors, notably the exorbitant fee of more than £1,000—£640 more than the most recent stated cost of administration—lack of awareness of the need to register, and the difficulties faced by local authorities with regard to looked-after children, have resulted in thousands of children being denied that right to British citizenship, even though it is theirs. A High Court judgment, to which I shall return, noted the mass of evidence. As a consequence, many children born in the UK feel alienated, excluded, isolated, second best, insecure and not fully assimilated in the culture and social fabric of the UK.

When we last debated this issue, as part of an amendment calling for a review of the barriers to registration of the right to citizenship, the Minister said:

“I completely acknowledge the points that the noble Baroness makes about citizenship costs; I will not tell her that you do not need citizenship to live here, because your Lordships will not accept that sort of answer.”


Quite right. I trust that there will be no attempt to revive such arguments today. Instead of trying to combat our arguments, the Minister proposed a “task-and-finish activity”. This would involve discussion of the issues in the wider context of societal cohesion and integration, which, sadly, will suffer as a result of this Bill. She then said that she would

“think about how we can then bring that back to the House”.—[Official Report, 5/10/20; cols. 429-30.]

Well, we had one initial meeting. It was very constructive, but it did not really address the substance of the withdrawn amendment, and nothing came back to the House.

In the meantime, there has been a significant development: the Court of Appeal upheld the High Court’s judgment which had found the fee unlawful because of the Home Office’s failure to take account of the best interests of children under Section 55 of the Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Act. It is worth noting a few points from the Court of Appeal’s judgment. First, it spelled out:

“There is no issue but that the recent and current levels of fees have had a serious adverse impact on the ability of a significant number of children to apply successfully for registration.”


It noted that payment of the fee would involve “unreasonable sacrifices” for those on low or middle incomes and, in the case of the children of lone parents on benefits,

“it is difficult to see how the fee could be afforded at all.”

Secondly, it underlined the importance of citizenship. Both these points, it said, were

“not disputed by the Secretary of State.”

Thirdly, and crucially, it said that, because

“no other consideration is inherently more significant than the best interests of the child”,

the Home Secretary

“must identify and consider the best interests of the child … and must weigh those interests against countervailing considerations.”

The judgment gave short shrift to the frankly pathetic Home Office argument that the debate on the fees initiated by Members of both Houses constituted consideration of children’s best interests. The chutzpah of trying to put that argument takes my breath away; anyway, the court would have nothing to do with it.

The case was heard by the Court of Appeal in October 2020 and the judgment was given in February 2021. The Home Office chose not to appeal against the best interests judgment yet, nearly a year later, it still has not published the outcome of the best interests review required by that judgment. However, because of a separate appeal on a different point of law to the Supreme Court in the name of PRCBC, of which I am a patron, and O, whose case it was, judgment on which is still awaited, Ministers now argue that publication of the best interests review must await that judgment. Why, given that the judgment has nothing to do with the best interests review?

As it happens, I understand that the judgment will be given next week. Can the Minister therefore commit to publishing the outcome of the best interests review swiftly following that judgment, and certainly before Report? If not, why not? The longer the continued wait, the more children will be denied their right to citizenship because of the level of the fee. This cannot be right. Please do not use the Supreme Court’s irrelevant judgment as an excuse for rejecting this amendment. These children cannot afford to wait any longer. Every month of delay is another month of exclusion and alienation from British society. The terriers are growing very impatient.

[The Lord Bishop of Gloucester]

My Lords, I will speak on Amendment 13 on behalf of my noble friend the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham, who sadly cannot be in the House until later today. He wishes to declare his interests in relation to both RAMP and Reset, as set out in the register. The following words are his, but I will say that I wholeheartedly agree with every one of them.

My interest comes from my ongoing engagement in this House with issues concerning children and ensuring that their best interests are central to legislation. The Government should be doing everything they can to ensure that all children in the UK have the opportunity to thrive. We should be working to remove barriers that they may face in seeking to reach their full potential. The current British citizenship registration fees create a barrier for many children to being and feeling fully part of society.

Nationality and Borders Bill

Lord Bishop of Gloucester Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 8th February 2022 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Gloucester]

My Lords, I have added my name to Amendment 105 and the intention to oppose Clause 31 standing part of the Bill. I too am grateful to Women for Refugee Women and others for their briefings and support.

In the New Plan for Immigration and the briefings for the Bill, the Government have argued repeatedly that the existing asylum and refugee system is weighted against vulnerable women. The Home Secretary has repeatedly made the point that the large majority of channel crossings are by men aged under 40, for example. Given this, there might be some expectation that the Bill would contain some good news or ambitions on the part of the Government for better reaching and helping the women and girls who make up 50% of the world’s refugees and displaced people. Unfortunately, I do not see any such commitments. As a sting in the tail, in Clauses 31 and 32 we find proposals that seem to significantly disadvantage women further.

I will not repeat but endorse the arguments that it is already disproportionately difficult for women, particularly survivors of gender-based violence, to have their claims for refugee protection status correctly determined. Clause 31 can only exacerbate this situation, which is a disaster for many vulnerable women. That is also true of Clause 32, unfortunately, and I am very grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, for laying out the issue here so clearly. I am very pleased to add my name in support of her Amendment 105.

I have no wish to take up time repeating the arguments, but it is critical to reiterate the point that the “particular social group” reason is an essential lifeline for survivors of sexual and gender-based persecution not otherwise covered by

“race, religion, nationality or political opinion”

in the reasons set out in the 1951 convention, as we have heard from other noble Lords. I will listen closely to the Minister’s response on this, but it is very difficult to see the justification for this move, which goes in the face of existing legal practice. It is so important for these survivors.

Many of my best memories of this place come from last year’s excellent debates on the Domestic Abuse Bill, which really showed politics in its best light. I know that this cause is taken seriously by the Government, but it seems that there is a blind spot on migrant women. We will discuss this again on later amendments, including my right reverend friend the Bishop of London’s forthcoming Amendment 140, but I end with a plea to the Minister to look again at these clauses and, if these amendments are not right, to present others that will ensure that vulnerable women are not further disadvantaged by this change.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

I offer the support of the Green group for all the amendments in this group and express horror at the whole nature of this part of the Bill. It is a great pleasure to follow the right reverend Prelate and to agree with everything that she said about the gender aspects of the Bill as it now stands, as also mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Lister.

I want to address Amendment 111 and make a simple observation: the average length of a prison sentence in England and Wales in 2021 was 18.6 months, compared with 11.4 months in 2000. Is this really something extraordinary? Is the UNHCR right in saying that this change in terminology is not right? I think that it clearly is.

I want to draw out what the noble Baronesses, Lady Lister and Lady McIntosh, said, both of them reflecting on different elements of how this law is throwing out 25 years of British legal tradition. I am not going to reopen the discussion on the last group about particular political labels, but I will note that this is happening in a country where only a couple of years ago we saw our most senior judges under attack on the front pages of certain newspapers. That is the context in which this is occurring.

I want to reflect—a number of people have talked about this but I shall boil it down—on what the Government’s proposals are likely to do: produce a large number of people who are denied status but who cannot be sent home because it is clearly impossibly unsafe and dangerous to send them there. That leads to a situation of more chaos and more forced black-market employment, which surely no one could want.