Nationality and Borders Bill (Fifth sitting)

Neil Coyle Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 19th October 2021 Public Bill Committees

[Bambos Charalambous]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Roger.

I thank colleagues from across the refugee and asylum sector for their considerate and constructive scrutiny of all the proposals made in the Bill’s evidence session in September.

As part of the Opposition’s detailed scrutiny, we will express our serious concerns about the Bill, which we believe does nothing to address the crisis in our broken asylum system and seeks to penalise the most vulnerable people in our society.

I shall first consider the Bill’s impact in addressing historical injustices in British nationality law concerning discrimination, specifically in relation to British overseas territories citizenship. We generally support the proposals in clauses 1 to 5, which seek to close important loopholes.

I pay tribute to the efforts of the British Overseas Territories Citizenship Campaign, which has campaigned tirelessly over many years for the nationality and citizenship equality rights of the children of British overseas territories citizens who have suffered under UK law owing to loopholes that we shall discuss in detail. These people feel a strong connection to the UK and deserve our support.

British nationality law can be complex. Some of the complexity arises from the British history of empire and Commonwealth. In passing the British Nationality Act 1981, Parliament created British citizens and British overseas territories citizenship. In doing so, it abolished citizenship in the UK and colonies—abbreviated to CUKC—which was a unifying citizenship for all persons of the UK and its colonies. This meant that the status of some children had the potential to be changed to overseas citizens, even though they had been born and raised in the UK.

Persons unified by CUKC were therefore separated by the 1981 Act into two groups, but amendments made since mean that the two groups are no longer aligned in British nationality law.

The Bill’s early clauses seek to bring into line the two elements of British nationality—British citizenship and British overseas territories citizenship. For the benefit of those on the Committee, I point out that British overseas territories citizenship is the citizenship of people connected to the territories that the UK has retained. It includes the following territories: Anguilla, Bermuda, the British Antarctic Territory, the British Indian Ocean Territory, the British Virgin Islands, the Cayman Islands, the Falkland Islands, Gibraltar, Montserrat, Pitcairn Islands, St Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha, South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, and the Turks and Caicos Islands.

Clause 1 would create a registration route for the adult children of British overseas territories citizens and for mothers to acquire British overseas territories citizenship. Before the 1981 Act commenced on 1 January 1983, British nationality law discriminated against women, whose children could not acquire British citizenship through them. The Act removed that discrimination, but did not address the impact of that discrimination prior to the Act. Many people, therefore, would have been born British but for this discrimination and continue to be excluded from British nationality after the passing of the Act.

It is clear that a historical anomaly was created. Changes were made under section 4C of the 1981 Act to rectify the situation of children of British citizens, but no such rectification was made for the children of British overseas territories citizens. Members of the Committee will know that under the 1981 Act a number of cases arise in which an individual who would have qualified for automatic British overseas territories citizenship, British citizenship or the right to register or naturalise as a citizen is unfairly prevented from doing so through no fault of their own, as has been the case with the adult children of British overseas territories citizens.

We need to rectify that injustice. The historical inability of mothers to transmit citizenship should be corrected, and I am glad that is being addressed in the Bill. Clause 1 sets out to correct that and create a registration route for the adult children of British overseas territories citizen mothers to acquire British overseas territories citizenship.

The Opposition generally support the changes proposed in clause 1 to close that important loophole. None the less, our amendment refers to a technical matter in relation to the drafting of clause 1—specifically, that it does not follow the language previously accepted to address the injustice, as used in section 4C of the 1981 Act.

I am sure that the Committee will agree that clarity is crucial in matters of citizenship and nationality law. The language used in clause 1 is not sufficiently clear. I will explain why. For example, the clause introduces proposed new section 17A, subsections (a) and (b) of which include the terms “had P’s parents been treated equally”. As Amnesty International and the Project for the Registration of Children as British Citizens outline, the difficulty with such wording is that it tells us nothing about the direction in which equality is to be achieved or indeed in what place.

[Neil Coyle (Bermondsey and Old Southwark) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that clarity is absolutely crucial, given the mistrust of the Home Office that often exists because of its high error rate in some citizenship and wider visa decision making processes?

[Bambos Charalambous]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. Citizenship, clarity and consistency in the law are essential, which is why we seek to rectify the position. The provisions of one Act cannot be inconsistent with those of another.

The amendment would address the difficulty by inserting the wording,

“had P’s mother been treated equally with P’s father”,

in clause 1. It would clarify the clause and the positive intention behind it. I think that there is broad agreement in the Committee on the need to address the historical inability of mothers to transmit citizenship.

[The Chair]

Ordinarily, unless the Minister wishes to intervene, we now have a debate in which any Member may take part. At the end of the debate, the Minister exercises his right to respond and the mover of the motion decides whether he wishes to press the amendment to a Division or withdraw it. If it is the latter, I seek the leave of the Committee for him to do so.

[Neil Coyle]

On a point of order, Sir Roger. Although I have been on a Bill Committee before, I am a bit rusty. We deal with just one amendment first—not the whole of clause 1.

[The Chair]

That is a very good point, and I am glad that the hon. Gentleman makes it. It gives me an opportunity to explain again. You may speak to any of the grouped amendments. In this instance, you may speak to amendments 29 and to 84, although it has not been moved. Any one of the second grouping of amendments—8, 9, 10, 11, 12 and new clause 16—may be spoken to. They may be moved later. I hope that is clear.

[Neil Coyle]

Thank you, Sir Roger: that is very helpful.

Do we have to declare an interest each time we speak or once per sitting? I want to make it clear and above board that I have received support from the Refugees, Asylum and Migration Policy project. It provides policy support two days a week. I am unsure how often I have to do that in the course of a Bill Committee.

[The Chair]

We have declared interests during the evidence sessions, and personally I regard that as a declaration of interest. If a Member is in doubt and wants to do a belt-and-braces job on this, they should feel free to declare an interest and cover themselves. That is their responsibility. As far as the Chair is concerned, that job has been done already. If a Member has not declared an interest but wishes to do so, the appropriate moment for it is when they stand to speak.

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[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Tom Pursglove)]

I start by thanking Opposition colleagues for their warm welcome to me in my new role. It is welcome that, in the early provisions of the Bill, there is broad agreement across the Committee about the need to correct the injustices and to put things right.

I thank the hon. Members for Enfield, Southgate, for Halifax, for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East and for Glasgow North East for tabling amendments 29 and 84. They both refer to clause 1, which I am pleased to introduce because it corrects a long-standing anomaly in British nationality law. I appreciate hon. Members’ attention to detail in seeking to make sure that the new provision is clear and in line with the parallel provision in the British Nationality Act 1981 for the children of British citizen mothers. However, I do not think an amendment is needed, as the proposed wording here achieves what is intended. In saying that this provision applies to someone who would have been a citizen had their parents been treated equally, we are talking about a situation where the law applied equally to mothers or fathers, women or men.

The term “parents” is consistent with the wording used in section 23 of the 1981 Act, which determined which citizens of the United Kingdom and colonies became British dependent territories citizens on commencement. One of the three conditions that a person needs to meet to qualify for registration under this clause is that they would have become a British dependent territories citizen under section 23(1)(b) or (c) of that Act. That section refers to a person’s “parent”.

I wish to point out that we will further clarify the points that have been made in the underpinning guidance. I trust that will afford greater comfort because it is clear that the Bill is technical, so plain language will be used in the guidance itself to achieve what members of the Committee seek to achieve.

[Neil Coyle]

I, too, congratulate the Minister on his new role. If the Minister is saying that this may require further explanation in the guidance, will he agree to review it in more depth before the Bill reaches the Lords if organisations are able to present examples of case studies where the current wording may not meet the Government’s intent?

[Tom Pursglove]

I will of course be delighted to receive any such examples. I genuinely think that, as with so many cases of immigration law, the underpinning guidance plays an important role in making it clear, in plain English that people can understand, precisely what various aspects of the law entail. I am satisfied with the current wording of the clause.

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[Mr Goodwill]

The principle of fees reflecting the cost of delivering the service is a good one that should be applied widely across Government. It is applied, for example, at the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency for some of the processes that it carries out for motorists. The Passport Office reflects the cost of issuing a passport in the fee that it charges. In the vast majority of cases, the cost of these services should be reflected in the fee. When I was an immigration Minister, I would scrutinise officials and say, “Why is it so expensive to do this?” They would say, “Well, these are often quite complex cases with quite a lot of paperwork.” We must also bear in mind that there are people who try to obtain British citizenship fraudulently using fake documents. Therefore, the amount of scrutiny that needs to take place reflects that. I hope that the Minister will reassure us that we will continue to apply that principle, so that we do not see profit incentives but merely cost recovery.

[Neil Coyle]

There is a slight contradiction in what the right hon. Member is claiming, because in the practical, lived reality of examples in my constituency it is at the point that a child discovers that they need to go through the citizenship process in order to access a passport that they discover all the fees that they are obliged to pay. He says that he wants the passport process to reflect only the costs of administering that passport. For the children and families affected by this, in order to get that passport at cost they have to pay thousands of pounds, which is profit for the Home Office.

[Mr Goodwill]

As I was saying, I would always scrutinise the officials and say, “Does it actually cost this much to apply?” They gave me evidence that this was indeed an expensive operation. As I said, often fake documents are presented, and forensic work needs to be done to ensure that the identity of the person is as stated, and that the documents provided in evidence are correct.

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[Anne McLaughlin]

Before I come to what I was going to say, may I respond to the right hon. Member for Scarborough and Whitby as well? He does not need that reassurance, and he does not need to worry about the British taxpayer, because in 2018 the Home Office made profits of £500 million by charging £500 million more than it cost to process fees. He talked about the DVLA. He cannot say that the DVLA never gets fraudulent claims; it builds them into its costs. The Home Office has already built in the cost of checking fraudulent claims, and the profit in 2018 was £500 million for the whole year, so the British taxpayer does not have to worry about that. Who has to worry about it are the people who have to pay the fees, which is what I wanted to talk about.

I will give two examples that I think will illustrate the broader point of the unfair impact on people’s lives when they have to pay fees over and above what it costs to become a British citizen or to be allowed to remain in this country. My hon. Friend the Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East was right to focus on children. After all, children have absolutely no say on what happens in their lives. Throughout all the talk about immigration, particularly asylum for instance, we talk about single men as if they are not vulnerable. I will tell the Committee about two young men who were extremely vulnerable—they are less so now—and how the fees affected their lives, stopped them living their lives, and almost ended one of their lives.

They are not young men now. If they are watching this—I doubt that they will be—I think they will be delighted that I am calling them young men; they are just younger than me. I will not give you the first one’s correct name. He adopted a Scottish name, which I will say is Fraser, even though it is not. Fraser has become part of my family. He calls my mother “Mum”. She taught him to drink whisky and he is eternally grateful for that.

[Neil Coyle]

Does she give lessons?

[Anne McLaughlin]

My mum is even less likely to be watching this, but if she is, I will certainly let the hon. Member know.

Fraser—I must remember to use the adopted name—came from Sudan. His village, where he grew up, was razed to the ground. Everybody fled, and he did not know where the rest of his family were. He assumed that his two brothers, sister, mum and dad had died, but he did not know for sure and he kept hearing rumours over the years. He was helped by the British Red Cross, so he came here as an asylum seeker and then got his refugee status. But he wanted to go back and find out, because he kept hearing rumours that his sister had managed to get away and that his mum might still be alive, although he doubted it. The British Red Cross was doing everything it could to help him, but in order to get back to Sudan he needed a British passport and to be a British citizen. He had got his refugee status, but that took something like six years beyond when he was able to apply for citizenship, because he could not afford the fees. Had he been charged what it actually cost the Home Office, he would have got home a whole lot sooner. I know that nobody in this room would have wanted what happened to him to happen, but I am just explaining what the impact of these extortionate fees can be.

It took Fraser a long time, but he did finally get back with his British passport. Members here will be very proud of me, because I went to his citizenship ceremony and stood to sing “God Save the Queen”. I do not do that terribly often, but I did it for him, because it was so important to him. He went to Sudan to see what had become of his family and he discovered that his sister had fled but had come back. His sister was there, living in very dangerous circumstances, which he was then able to help her with. She has children there; she does not want to leave Sudan, but she wants to be safe and he was able to help her. He discovered that his mum had been very ill for many years. She had not died at the time; she, too, had escaped. She had been very ill for many years but—I am trying to think how to put this—she had clung on, because she just wanted to see him one more time. But she had died two months before he got over there.

As I said, I am not for a second suggesting that anybody here or anybody drafting the legislation would not care about what happened to Fraser, but if he had had easier access, had not had to save up for years because he worked on the minimum wage in various precarious employments, and had been able to get over sooner, he could have been reunited with his family, which is a huge thing for him. He calls my mum “Mum”, because he does not have one in his life.

I will call the second person I want to talk about Matthew. He had leave to remain but had to renew it after three years. He, too, worked on the minimum wage in precarious employment, with a zero-hours contract. How could he save up the £2,000 that he had to pay to renew it? So he buried his head in the sand; he did not save it up—well, he could not possibly have saved it up, to be fair—and then his employer said to him, rightly, “I’m no longer allowed to employ you, because you don’t have leave to remain.” He said, “But I can’t afford to apply for leave to remain,” but of course the employer cannot do anything about that. He was obviously then unemployed, but he has no recourse to public funds, because he does not have any status in the UK, so his housing association is saying to him, “Where’s the rent?” A year has gone by and he has clocked up all sorts of debt. His housing association is saying, “Look, we don’t want to evict you, but we are going to have to.” That is all because he could not afford the fees—fees that were way more than it was costing the Home Office. There was no need to do this to him.

The situation then got really complicated because he discovered something—this fits in with new clause 16 and awareness raising. He did not know that it is possible for the fees to be waived if the person is in certain circumstances, and his case fitted those circumstances; they are not waived as a right, but there is that possibility. He did not know that, so he did not ask. He got a lawyer, who obviously did know it, and asked. The Home Office asked to see his bank statements for the past couple of years, and then said, “No, we are not waiving the fee,” and just left it at that. He came to me, and I asked the Home Office. The Minister there was very helpful and said, “Look, it is because he has been gambling his money away. That is why he can’t pay his fees.”

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Those decisions are not made because we do not want to cost the taxpayer any more money. The decision to make a profit from people has a hugely detrimental impact on their lives, including that constituent and his children. He had to send his children to live with somebody else because he could not feed them and had no heating. I put on the record my thanks those at his housing association, Spire View Housing Association, because they took an interest in the case and took it aside. Not only that, but they gave him a fuel card so that he could heat his home, and food and vouchers so that he had a little dignity and could go and buy food himself. They really helped him to get back on his feet, and it was incredible that they did that. I hope I have illustrated how excessive fees can have a massive impact in a way that I do not think anyone in this room would want them to.

[Neil Coyle]

I am a little rusty when it comes to this process, Sir Roger, so thank you for your clarifications. I missed the first evidence session, in which declarations of interest were made, because I was at my brother’s wedding, which was fantastic. For the purposes of formal declaration, as noted in my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, I receive support from the Refugee, Asylum and Migration Policy Project in a policy capacity to support constituents and to work on relevant issues here in Westminster.

I welcome the Minister to his new role and congratulate him on completing the marathon, which of course goes through my constituency—he is welcome back to Bermondsey and Old Southwark any time. He was raising funds for Justice and Care, which could lead to interesting discussions about some aspects of the Bill. [Interruption.] I have not been heckled by technology before—these are interesting interventions. We are clear for take-off I believe.

I shall plough on. The Bill addresses access for a relatively small group, which some will welcome, but I support the amendments. [Interruption.] This is rather distracting.

[The Chair]

Order. I am terribly sorry, but clearly someone has not fastened their seatbelt. Let us try again, but if it happens again I may have to suspend the sitting for five minutes.

[Neil Coyle]

I thank colleagues for their kind words about not particularly wanting to hear my contribution and being grateful for the technical problem.

I support the amendments because I believe that the Bill misses an opportunity to address some wider process issues that need reviewing for several reasons. Fundamentally, I come back to the impact of imposing costs on people’s access to their rights and entitlements, given the delays and times involved and the impact on Home Office staff.

Let me give a practical example: the Home Office’s processes take so long and cost so much that businesses in my constituency have moved country as a result. One financial sector firm was trying to recruit someone from Japan. They were told that it would take at least six months to process an application, and that she may not even qualify to work in the UK under the process they were following. They discovered that it was cheaper and faster to up sticks, because of the price, process and times. They chose to move to Frankfurt, and in two weeks they were able to complete the registration and visa process that they could not do over here.

There is a wider problem with how long the process takes. Imposing costs adds to the bureaucratic impact on the Home Offices and the delays. At the end of March 2021, 66,000 people were waiting for initial decisions from the Home Office—the highest figure for over a decade. Of those, 56,000 had been waiting more than six months. I come back to the point that the right hon. Member for Scarborough and Whitby made about accessing a passport. If a child wants to go on a school trip and wants a passport, but cannot get it without going through a process that takes more than six months, how on earth will they go on a school trip? In that circumstance, children are denied the opportunities afforded to their classmates, even if they were born over the river here at St Thomas’ Hospital and sit next to the other children whom they do not have the same rights as. It is iniquitous.

[Anne McLaughlin]

I just want to share a story. When I was in primary 7, everyone in my class went on a trip to Paris, except me, because my parents were too strict and thought I was too young. At least I understood why. Those children cannot go because of who they are; it is not because of a decision by their parents but because they are deemed not to be equal to their classmates. I know how bad it felt to be told by my mum and dad that I was not going to Paris. It must feel 100 times worse for a child when who they are is in question.

[Neil Coyle]

rose—

[The Chair]

Order. We are feeling our way. I do not want to be heavy handed, but interventions are not speeches.

[The Chair]

It is quite all right. We allow greater flexibility in Committee than we do on the Floor of the House. Nevertheless, an intervention should arise directly from, and be a question to, the Member who has the floor.

[Neil Coyle]

I am not sure why the hon. Lady’s parents were concerned about Paris in particular, but the point is that they were able to make that choice. In these circumstances, children born and educated in this country who have never lived anywhere else do not have the right to decide whether they can go on a school trip.

Returning to my point about the timeframes involved, the number of people waiting over a year for a decision has risen tenfold since 2010, with 33,000 people in that position in 2020, including 7,000 children, and 2,500 people waiting more than three years. I have at least two examples in my constituency of people waiting over a decade for a Home Office decision on their status. Those people are reliant on local authority emergency support, because the Home Office has shunted the cost to councils rather than get on with the process, make a decision and end the need for more expensive emergency support.

Who carries out the process and what trust is there in the Home Office? We are well aware of the Windrush examples and the denial of entitlements to people who were legally entitled to be in this country and should have had their rights upheld. They should have been respected for their contribution to rebuilding this country, to providing our public services in particular, and to our economy more widely.

The hostile environment has damaged trust in that regard; calling only on casework experience, the Home Office had an officer placed in my council’s “no recourse to public funds” team who took away the driver’s licence of someone who was seeking support from the council, which caused even more complications in getting their situation addressed, adding more time and more delay. In this Bill, the Home Office seems to be adding more complications, process and bureaucracy, rather than addressing where things have gone wrong—and things have gone very badly wrong.

To give one example, my constituent Ade Ronke came to see me when I was first elected in 2015. At that point, her son was three years old and she had been battling for three years to try to get her status resolved. The Home Office had declared that she was in effect a person of bad character because it believed that she had been subject to a criminal prosecution. She had never been arrested, she had never been in court, and the police and courts provided proof that it was not her that the Home Office was referring to, but it took a long time. Her son was 10 years old before that case was resolved. He had grown up for seven years in a family where there was no entitlement to child benefit or housing benefit and no recourse to public funds. Throughout that process, his mother was reliant on a church group for accommodation.

The Home Office could have used the Bill to address the division that has been created between what the Government aspire to do and the faith groups and others who are providing support, as the hon. Member for Glasgow North East mentioned. That philanthropic support means that there are many organisations and individuals out there who are aware of the deep disadvantage and even destitution that these Home Office policies cause, which the Bill could have addressed.

There is also an issue about numbers, which perhaps the Minister can address when he speaks. It is unclear whether the Bill will require the Home Office to take on more staff or whether it intends to increase the workload of existing staff. The staff complement has risen in the past 10 years, but productivity has collapsed. We see fewer decisions made and fewer interviews of people going through these cases per calendar month, despite the fact that there are more officers working on those cases, according to Home Office figures.

At a time when nine in 10 crimes in this country go unpunished, we should be doing everything humanly possible across the House to ensure that the Home Office can focus on law and order and its fundamental purpose of keeping our communities safe. That is not happening for my constituency on antisocial behaviour and other crimes, and it would be welcome if the Home Office could return its focus to those issues, rather than adding more bureaucracy, more costs and more time to distract from that fundamental purpose.

Linked with that question, over the past 10 years we have seen a drop in access to legal aid. I know that the Bill’s equality impact assessment suggests there will be an extension to legal aid support in some cases. I hope that the Minister, when he addresses this particular section of the Bill, will confirm that legal aid will be available to those going through citizenship processes.

As the hon. Member for Cumbernauld and all the other places—I thought my constituency had a long name—said, there is also a cost issue, and the Bill misses an opportunity to address that. I support these amendments based on the cost issues alone, because we are one of the most expensive countries in the world in terms of the bureaucracy involved in this. I am proud to be British; I think this is the best country in the world and that London is the best city in the world, but it is also one of the most expensive.

To process citizenship here costs 10 times as much as in many of our neighbours: France and Spain have the lowest, but I appreciate that some on the Government Benches do not like European comparators, so let us look at the United States, as our price is already double theirs. It is also hideously expensive here compared with Canada, which charges only £400 to process citizenship, or other Commonwealth compatriots such as Australia.

I know that some Government Members will be using Australia as an example in later parts of the Bill, but perhaps they could have a look at it here as well, because Australia charges just £153 for an adult citizenship registration process, and Australia does not charge children a bean. There is a direct example within the Commonwealth of a country that has adopted a more progressive system, and perhaps we could learn from that.

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[Neil Coyle]

Some people are fortunate enough to find sponsors for these processes, but fundamentally that still leaves the problem in place. The Government said they would review this. Where are they with that? The point I want to make is this: someone who goes to university is more likely to secure a higher income and pay more taxes in the long term, so, if this issue is a deterrent to some people going to university, which I believe it has been in some constituency cases, failure to address the problem will have a long-term economic hit on UK plc.

My final point is on the lived reality of people in these circumstances. They often have no recourse to public funds conditions imposed as well, and the restrictions and limitations of that are devastating. Sadly, I have multiple examples from my constituency.

Mr Musari came to see me in 2015, when I was first elected. He was working in the private sector and renting in the private sector, when he suddenly had a no recourse to public funds condition imposed on him. His wife was pregnant with their third child, Mofe, at the time, so she had stopped working in order to give birth—you cannot really do both at once. The impact of the no recourse to public funds condition was that he was in the process of being evicted, because he was not able to pay his rent, because he could not access benefits and continued support. He became reliant on a church group for accommodation.

He told a group in my constituency—he got up and told this story publicly—that on Christmas day, when he was living through that terrible experience, he woke up in that emergency philanthropic accommodation, in one room with his wife and their three children. They had no private kitchen use. There was no Christmas dinner. Because of their financial circumstances, there were no Christmas presents for the children. He said that that day he felt that Government policies meant that if he took his own life, his children would get more support. He told that story publicly to outline the human impact on him.

His family, of course, ended up becoming reliant on emergency social services support from Southwark Council. That is a massive cost to a council—a colossal cost. London councils are spending £53 million a year on emergency social services for children subject to no recourse to public funds conditions, because the Home Office has imposed that process on them. That is the process we have before us today. It is a massive economic cost. Councils of every political hue are up in arms at how they are being forced to spend money through their noses on emergency services rather than on more affordable, long-term, permanent accommodation. Emergency accommodation provided through social services is the most expensive—more expensive than sending someone to prison or detaining someone in hospital. It is a ridiculously expensive system, but a deliberate choice. The Bill is an opportunity to address those issues, and I fear that it will impose new, and more, costs.

The equality impact assessment says that the Government plan to drop no recourse to public funds conditions for some of those affected by the legislation. I hope the Minister will say more about that. I hope he will agree to do what the Prime Minister has asked, which is to publish the figures on all those subject to no recourse to public funds conditions. I hope he will tell us whether he will agree to a review of the whole system to help people like Mr Musari and all those affected as we go forward.

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[Tom Pursglove]

I am grateful to the hon. Members for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East and for Glasgow North East for tabling amendments 8 to 12 and new clause 16, which provides the Committee with the opportunity to consider fees charged in respect of applications for British citizenship and British overseas territories citizenship.

Before I address the specific points in the proposed new measures, I want to provide some background information. Application fees for immigration and nationality applications have been charged for a number of years under powers set out under clause 68 of the Immigration Act 2014, and they play a vital role in our country’s ability to run a sustainable system, reducing the burden on taxpayers. Sitting beneath the 2014 Act are fees orders and fees regulations, which are scrutinised by both Houses before they come into effect; that is an important point. That ensures that there are checks and balances within the system and maintains the coherence of the fees framework. If we were to remove those fees during the passage of the Bill, as the hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark suggests, it would undermine the existing legal framework without proper consideration of the sustainability and fairness to the UK taxpayer.

[Neil Coyle]

Will the Minister give way?

[Tom Pursglove]

I will, although I know that you wanted us to make good progress, Sir Roger.

[Neil Coyle]

I want to comment on the point about the burden on taxpayers. First, there is a very significant profit margin—86% profit for some of the processes of the Home Office—so there is no burden there. Secondly, it is quite offensive language to those that are living, working and paying tax here to say that they are a burden, even though they are already contributing economically through national insurance and tax contributions. I find the language unhealthy.

[The Chair]

Order. The Minister has indicated that we want to make progress, and that is true, but the Minister must not feel under any pressure not to respond to points that have been raised. This is a very important part of the Bill, so please, as a new Minister, feel able to take your time if you need to do so.

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[Tom Pursglove]

The hon. Member is always on point in asking pertinent questions. I reiterate the point that the Home Office tends not to charge fees in instances where unfairness or injustice have occurred, and it remains our intention to continue to adopt that approach in relation to the provisions that we are enacting through the Bill. I hope that gives him the reassurance he is seeking.

[Neil Coyle]

I thank the Minister for giving way. Yesterday we saw Parliament at its finest, and I genuinely think that he is a decent man, but what he is saying today is not what was indicated previously and it does not address what the Court of Appeal has required the Home Office to do. If he is saying that there will be secondary legislation at some point, when is it coming, because we have an opportunity here to address the issue? The Court of Appeal found that the Home Office had failed to assess the best interests of children in setting the fee. To fail to do so again in this legislation will have only one outcome, which is the Government being back in court.

Also, I forgot to mention the case that I was speaking about earlier, so for reference it is R (The Project for the Registration of Children as British Citizens) v. the Secretary of State for the Home Department.

[Tom Pursglove]

I thank the hon. Member for that further intervention. Let me just set out the position on the point about child citizenship fees that he raises. I understand the concerns expressed about child citizenship fees. However, this is currently subject to legal challenge in the Supreme Court and the position will be reviewed after the judgments have been received.

[Neil Coyle]

So when the Government said in February that the issue was being reviewed, was it not being reviewed then? It is extraordinary that many months down the line the Minister is telling us that there will be a review only if they lose the case in the Supreme Court, which will incur further costs of millions of pounds for the taxpayer simply to go through the legal process.

[Tom Pursglove]

The hon. Member would be surprised if we did not want to review the situation and take into account fully the judgment of the Supreme Court in due course. I think that it is entirely proper that we take a view on this and that the situation should be reviewed in the light of any judicial ruling handed down. This exchange has been very useful, as it has allowed me to address many of the points that I would have picked up at the end of my remarks.

I turn now to subsection (1) of new clause 16, the aim of which is to limit the Secretary of State’s power to charge a fee for applying for British citizenship and British overseas territories citizenship to the cost to the Secretary of State of processing the application. As I have already outlined, imposing such a requirement would cut across the funding and coherence of the whole system and is not a matter for the Bill.

Subsection (2) would prevent the Secretary of State from charging a fee to register as a British citizen or British overseas territories citizen if the child is being looked after by a local authority. It is important to remember that any child, irrespective of nationality, who is looked after by their local authority can apply for both limited and indefinite leave to remain without being required to pay application fees.

--- Later in debate ---

[Tom Pursglove]

I am conscious that I want to get through my remarks on this. I will write to the hon. Member on that point.

[Neil Coyle]

The Minister is being very generous in giving way. Perhaps he will be able to tell us how many applications for a fee waiver were denied by the Home Office in each of the last few years, or perhaps he could furnish us with that detail in another way. My understanding is that it is about 90%.

[Tom Pursglove]

Again, I do not have the figure to hand, but I will happily take that away and see if I can provide him with a written answer on that point. Information about becoming a British citizen is made available in published guidance on gov.uk and we are committed to ensuring information of this nature is fully accessible for all. I am conscious that we have had quite an extensive debate around fees in general, but I hope what I have said around the provisions in the Bill and the Government’s intentions for handling fees in relation to the nationality measures we are seeking to enact gives comfort to the Committee, and that the hon. Members will feel able to withdraw their amendments.