Immigration Bill

Lord Pannick Excerpts

Monday 7th April 2014 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Pannick]

56: Clause 64, page 51, line 29, leave out subsections (1) and (2) and insert—
“(1) A committee of members of both Houses of Parliament shall be established to consider and report on whether section 40 of the British Nationality Act 1981 (deprivation of citizenship) should be amended to enable the Secretary of State to deprive a person of their citizenship status if—
(a) the citizenship status results from the person’s naturalisation, and(b) the Secretary of State is satisfied that the deprivation is conducive to the public good because the person, while having that citizenship status, has conducted him or herself in a manner which is seriously prejudicial to the vital interests of the United Kingdom, any of the Islands, or any British overseas territory, even if to do so would have the effect of making a person stateless. (2) The committee shall consist of six members of the House of Lords nominated by the Chairman of Committees, and six members of the House of Commons nominated by the Speaker of the House of Commons, to be appointed on the passing of this Act to serve for the duration of the present Parliament.
(3) Any casual vacancy occurring by reason of the death, resignation or incapacity of a member of the committee shall be filled by the nomination of a member by the Chairman of Committees or the Speaker of the House of Commons, as the case may be.
(4) The quorum of the committee shall be two members of each House and the committee shall be entitled to sit and to transact business whether Parliament be sitting or not, and notwithstanding a vacancy in the membership of the committee.
(5) Subject to the above provisions, the committee may regulate its own procedure.”

[Lord Pannick (CB)]

My Lords, this amendment stands in my name and in the names of the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Basildon, the noble Lord, Lord Macdonald of River Glaven, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood. The noble Lord, Lord Macdonald, has asked me to express his apologies to the House for his absence abroad today.

Clause 64 would give the Home Secretary power to decide that British citizenship obtained by naturalisation should be removed for reasons of the public good, even if the result would be to render the person stateless. Amendment 56 would establish a Joint Committee of both Houses of Parliament to consider all aspects of the Government’s proposal and report back. Parliament could then take an informed view on whether the benefits, if any, of the Government’s proposal outweighed any detriments. A Joint Committee is required because Clause 64 was added to the Bill very late in the passage of the Bill through the other place—that is, 24 hours before Report and Third Reading on 30 January, so there was no pre-legislative scrutiny of this proposal, no consultation and no opportunity for consideration by the Public Bill Committee of the other place. The absence of pre-legislative scrutiny and proper consultation is especially unfortunate in a context such as this. The Home Secretary said, in introducing this clause in the Commons on 30 January:

“Depriving people of their citizenship is a serious matter. It is one of the most serious sanctions a state can take against a person and it is therefore not an issue that I take lightly”.—[Official Report, Commons, 30/1/14; col. 1038.]

The need for proper scrutiny by a Joint Committee is not an abstract matter. The implications of Clause 64 raise matters of real concern on which there is very limited information, as the debates in Committee in your Lordships’ House demonstrated. Many questions were posed in Committee as to how this proposed power would work and what its consequences would be. A Joint Committee will need to consider the practical implications and the international implications of implementing this power. As discussed in Committee, there are real concerns that the proposed measure would do little to protect the national interest and may be counterproductive. It is difficult to understand what would be achieved by taking away the citizenship of a person resident here. It may be more difficult to remove them from this country as other countries would be less willing to accept them without a passport.

In his letter dated 4 April—which I and other Peers received and for which I thank the noble Lord—the Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Taylor of Holbeach, emphasised, rightly, that we are concerned in this clause with dangerous individuals, individuals who pose, as he said, a serious national security risk to the United Kingdom. There is no dispute about that. The question is how the exercise of a right to remove British citizenship would assist in protecting us against such individuals. The noble Lord said in his letter that the Home Secretary is concerned to prevent such people from travelling abroad using a British passport to participate in terrorist training activities. However, the Secretary of State already has power to withdraw a British passport from dangerous individuals for precisely such a reason without stripping them of their nationality and making them stateless. The noble Lord, Lord Taylor, made a Written Ministerial Statement on this very subject to the House on 25 April of last year.

In practice, it seems likely that a deprivation of citizenship would normally occur while the individual is out of this country. However, that raises a concern that other countries may well say that the individual was allowed in only by reason of the fact that they were travelling on a British passport, and now that that status has been removed and the person has no other nationality, we, the United Kingdom, can have them back. Your Lordships may have seen the advice of Professor Guy Goodwin-Gill, professor of international refugee law at Oxford University, that in those circumstances this country would have an international law obligation to the other state to readmit that individual, however objectionable their conduct.

The Joint Committee will also want to consider whether the benefits, if any, of the proposed new power justify the adverse international implications. This country played a leading international role in the drafting of the 1961 UN Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness. We have done much since then to encourage other nations to refrain from inflicting on their citizens what Lord Wilson, in the Al-Jedda case in the Supreme Court last year, described as “the evil of statelessness”. There are, regrettably, all too many dictators around the world who are willing to use the creation of statelessness as a weapon against opponents and we should do nothing to suggest that such conduct is acceptable.

The Government have now, very late in the passage of the Bill, brought forward their own amendment to provide for post-legislative scrutiny, and the Minister will speak to that. However, the noble Lord’s Amendment 56A does not say who will conduct this post-legislative scrutiny or indeed require that they are even independent of the Home Office. The noble Lord’s amendment allows for information in the scrutiny report not to be published. In any event—this is the crucial point—the Government’s Amendment 56A does not meet my concern because proper consideration of the implications of this proposed power to render people stateless is required before legislation is enacted and not afterwards.

Given the absence of pre-legislative scrutiny, the late stage at which Clause 64 was added to the Bill and the lack of clarity as to how this power will operate and with what consequences, we should refer it to a Joint Committee so that Parliament can be properly informed on these difficult and important issues. I beg to move.

[The Deputy Speaker (Baroness Pitkeathley)]

I must tell your Lordships that if Amendment 56 is agreed to, I cannot call Amendments 56ZA to 56ZD inclusive for reasons of pre-emption.

--- Later in debate ---

In conclusion—I think noble Lords will want to move to a conclusion on this matter—this power is very narrowly drawn and is aimed at addressing a real and current threat posed by a small number of individuals. I hope noble Lords realise that the Government are committed to taking proportionate action to protect the public and removing the privileges of British citizenship from those who abuse it. In light of those points, I hope noble Lords will support the government amendment and agree not to press the other amendments that we have discussed in this group.

[Lord Pannick]

I thank all noble Lords who have spoken in this debate, particularly the Minister, whose door has been open throughout the passage of the Bill to all noble Lords concerned about particular clauses. He has given a characteristically full and helpful response to the amendments.

In his first intervention in this debate, the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, said that he recognises the importance of scrutiny at the earliest opportunity and that Amendment 56A therefore allows for a report one year after the passage of the Bill. The earliest opportunity for scrutiny is before we confer this power on the Secretary of State, not after we confer this power on the Secretary of State. The Minister then said that the place for proper scrutiny was in this House, not in a Joint Committee. But for this House to do its job properly depends on adequate pre-legislative scrutiny so that we have the information adequately to assess the implications of Clause 64. I am particularly grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, and to other noble Lords, for identifying a large number of questions that the Joint Committee no doubt will wish to consider.

The Minister also suggested that delay while we wait for a Joint Committee report might somehow be damaging. I find that very difficult to understand. Clause 64 would remove a restriction on creating statelessness, which has been part of our law since 2003. The Minister has not told us how many, if any, cases there are where the Secretary of State would wish to remove nationality on public good grounds but is currently prevented from doing so because it would cause statelessness. In any event, I do not understand—and it is plain from the debates that I am not the only the noble Lord who does not understand—how removing nationality to make a person stateless is going to assist national security by making it easier to control undesirable people or remove them from this country. That is one of the crucial questions that a Joint Committee will need to address.

In any event, a Joint Committee could report by, say, October, and if the Government see fit in the light of such a report, they can bring forward a short Bill in the next Session. The Minister cannot seriously suggest that the Queen’s Speech in June will be so full of material that the Home Secretary will be told in the autumn, in the light of a Joint Committee report, “We’re very sorry, but there’s simply no room to come back to this matter”. Let us be realistic about this issue.

Finally, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood, said, Amendment 56 is a modest amendment. It does not ask this House to take a final view on whether the proposed new power should be conferred on the Home Secretary. What it does is to invite this House rather to ensure that Parliament is fully informed of the benefits, if any, and the detriments, before the law is changed. Given the importance of the subject matter and the difficult questions that continue to exist as to the practical and legal consequences of the conferral and exercise of this new power, I think that that is a step that we should take to require proper pre-legislative scrutiny.

This is a matter of fundamental principle and I wish to test the opinion of the House.