Draft Special Immigration Appeals Commission (Procedure) (Amendment) Rules 2023

Stephen Kinnock Excerpts

Wednesday 1st March 2023 General Committees

[Stephen Kinnock (Aberavon) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Robert. I wish you and all hon. Members present a happy St David’s Day.

On 7 November last year, a Delegated Legislation Committee, of which I was a member, considered regulations that marked the first in a series of steps necessary to implement provisions in the Nationality and Borders Act 2022 on deprivation of citizenship. The provisions relevant to today’s debate address the area of decisions made by the Secretary of State to deprive a UK national of their citizenship without prior notice. During the passage of the 2022 Act, Parliament added safeguards to ensure that the scope of those powers would be restricted to cases where a deprivation order was strictly necessary on grounds of national security, and that appropriate levels of judicial oversight would apply.

Under the legislation, the Secretary of State is required to apply to the Special Immigration Appeals Commission when making an order to deprive someone of their citizenship. That application must, among other things, provide an explanation as to why it is necessary for the order to be made without providing notice to the individual concerned. It is then up to the SIAC to determine whether the Secretary of State’s reasoning is “obviously flawed”.

The process set out in the 2022 Act, and in the Nationality and Borders Act 2022 (Consequential Amendments) (No. 2) Regulations 2022, which we approved last November, began with enabling the Lord Chancellor to make rules setting out in detail how that process would work. As the next step in the process, the draft rules under consideration today incorporate that detail, and as such provide a framework for the SIAC to use when considering future cases of that kind.

The Opposition continue to support the implementation of the provisions, subject to the appropriate safeguards being in place and observed. I do not have much to add to the Minister’s comments, beyond a couple of questions. Will the Minister elaborate on what further legislative steps, if any, need to be taken before the relevant sections of the Nationality and Borders Act will fully enter into force? If possible, will he give the Committee a sense of when he expects the first applications for deprivation orders to be made? Alternatively, when does he expect the SIAC to be able to begin considering the substance of any applications that the Secretary of State may decide to submit under these rules?