British Citizenship Fees: Children

Stuart C McDonald Excerpts

Tuesday 4th September 2018 Westminster Hall

[Stuart C. McDonald (Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East) (SNP)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered fees for registering children as British citizens.

It is good to see you in the Chair, Mr Hollobone. I trust that you are feeling suitably refreshed after the summer recess. What better way to start the new term than by seeking to ensure that all children entitled to British citizenship can access it and not be prevented from doing so by an exorbitant Home Office fee?

I thank colleagues from the different political parties who supported the debate application, the Backbench Business Committee for granting the debate, and everyone who has come along to support it. I also thank the 69 MPs, from every political party in the House of Commons, who have signed early-day motion 1262. Finally, I thank all the campaigning organisations that have been working incredibly hard, including the Children’s Society, Coram Children’s Legal Centre, Let Us Learn, the Project for the Registration of Children as British Citizens—PRCBC—and Amnesty International.

What we all seek is utterly reasonable and a very modest proposal. All we are asking the Home Office to do is to put in place a charging regime for registering children as British citizens that is fair and that allows them to access their right to citizenship, rather than one that leaves them to seek various forms of costly and precarious immigration status and sometimes with no status at all.

[John Howell (Henley) (Con)]

The hon. Gentleman may have seen that my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary has announced that he has asked for a review. Does the hon. Gentleman have an idea of what might come of that?

[Stuart C. McDonald]

I hope good things come of the review, but I suspect that the Minister will be in a better position to provide us with answers.

We seek a system that reflects what Parliament intended when it passed the British Nationality Act 1981—that is, a system that makes it easy for kids with the requisite close connections to Britain to exercise their right to British citizenship, not one that makes money out of them by charging what the Home Secretary himself has described as a “huge” sum of money in order to fund other Home Office work. That is the case in a nutshell. In the remainder of my contribution, I plan to look at what Parliament intended for these children when it passed the legislation in 1981 and then to make the case that what the Home Office has put in place undermines rather than implements those intentions.

In 1983, Parliament scrapped the laws that meant that being born in the United Kingdom was in itself enough to make a person British. As well as being born in Britain, a person now also needs to have a parent who is settled or a UK citizen at the time of their birth. That was an understandable step. Many countries, although not all, have done the same. In a world in which people can live in several countries over their lifetime, place of birth is not necessarily the best way to identify a person’s true home country—the country that the person is most closely connected to and that should take them under its wing. However, in taking that step, Parliament was careful and mindful of the fact that it did not want to leave significant numbers of children for whom Britain is home deprived of that citizenship and the protections, security and stability that the anchor of citizenship can provide, which is precisely why it enacted provisions on registration.

British-born kids who were not automatically British at birth are allowed to register as British if they lived in the UK for the first 10 years of their life; either parent settles or becomes British before the kid turns 18; or if the kid was stateless at birth and lived for five continuous years in this country. Citizenship is their right. There is no discretion for the Home Secretary, although the 1981 Act rightly retained a discretion for the Home Secretary to allow other children to register, including those who came here at an early age and are to all intents and purposes British.

We could one day have a different debate on whether the rules are precisely the right ones and whether they draw the lines in the right place, but I think nobody could disagree that this type of rule was essential. The policy reasons behind them were quite right. In ending jus soli or citizenship by birthplace alone, it was vital to ensure that the thousands of kids for whom Britain was and is home should still enjoy that citizenship. The simple fact is that, by setting exorbitant fees, the Home Office is to all intents and purposes undermining Parliament’s intentions. Too many children cannot access citizenship because the Home Office charges what the Home Secretary has acknowledged is a “huge amount” of money.

When the British Nationality Act came into force in 1983, the fee set for registration applications was £30. In today’s money, that is almost exactly £100. For a quarter of a century, the fee simply represented the administrative cost of processing an application, but from 2007 the Home Office started charging more than the administrative cost. Accelerated increases mean that we have reached the “huge amount” of just over £1,000. The Home Office estimates the cost of processing an application to be £340, so it is creaming off £672 every time a child seeks to access their entitlement to citizenship.

[Stephen Kerr (Stirling) (Con)]

It does my soul good to hear a member of the Scottish National party speak in such praise of British citizenship. I concur with that, but the hon. Gentleman is making a very good point. Compared with the cost in other countries—for example, the fee is £250 in Germany, £500 in the United States, £160 in Australia and £300 in Canada—the costs in our country are far too high.

[Stuart C. McDonald]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his intervention—I shall be very happy to champion the cause of British citizenship for the next few years at least. He makes the absolutely valid point that, on the basis of international comparisons, the amount that we charge children is exorbitant. It does not compare well at all.

The Project for the Registration of Children as British Citizens has done fantastic work in challenging the Home Office fees on behalf of kids and even in helping to secure financial support from generous donors willing to help kids to achieve citizenship through donations, although it is outrageous that kids should have to look to charity to secure their citizenship. That organisation is fantastically well placed to speak about the impact on British kids of being denied formal British citizenship. The kids grow up blissfully unaware that they are not, unlike their peers, British citizens. They do not realise that until they cannot join their peers on a school trip abroad or they apply for university and suddenly are faced with paying overseas fees. Without British citizenship—they are just like the Windrush generation in a sense—these children are made subject to immigration control and potentially the hostile or compliant environment, which means that they run the risk of being refused access to healthcare, employment, education, social assistance and housing. There is even the possibility of being detained, removed from and excluded from their own country altogether. In fact, that was mentioned in the most recent report by Stephen Shaw.

The PRCBC has provided a number of case studies—I suspect that hon. Members have access to them—highlighting individual stories. I will mention just one. May was brought to the UK when she was two months old and she has never left the country. She was first taken into care when aged five. A full care order was made later. She should have been registered as a British citizen under section 3 of the British Nationality Act while she was in care, but she was not, and she lost the opportunity when she turned 18. May gave birth to Heather and was later granted indefinite leave to remain, but Heather was not born British, because at the time of her birth her mother was neither British nor settled. Heather now has an entitlement to register as British under section 1 of the 1981 Act because of the settled status that her mother subsequently acquired, but her mother simply cannot afford the £1,012 fee to register her daughter as British. Heather was born and brought up in Britain. She knows no other country. She is to all intents and purposes British. She is entitled to British citizenship—she should not be required to pay more than £1,000 to access that entitlement—and cannot access it.

Tens of thousands of British-born children face similar issues. Surely that is contrary to the Government’s duty to safeguard and promote the welfare of children and to the requirement that children’s best interests be a primary consideration in all actions concerning them.

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

I congratulate my fellow member of the Select Committee on Home Affairs on bringing up this very important issue. Is he aware of two things? First, the very expensive fees for all sorts of visa and citizenship arrangements in this country are having repercussions. For example, I have just had to pay out £465 for my daughter to study for a few months in Brazil—that form of visa is most expensive for UK citizens. Secondly, does he agree that, far from the Home Office making a substantial profit out of vulnerable children, there should be no fee at all in the case of children in the care system?

--- Later in debate ---

[Stuart C. McDonald]

The hon. Gentleman has been a champion of this cause on the Home Affairs Committee. I agree that there should be no fee for children who have been in the care system. The early-day motion that I tabled referred to that and I will address it momentarily.

The Minister met me and representatives from PRCBC and Amnesty to hear our arguments. I am grateful that she was willing to listen. I want to address some of the arguments the Home Office continues to use to justify the current fees regime.

First, the Home Office asserts that the fee reflects the benefit received by the child in being able to register. That totally misunderstands the situation. Parliament has decided that these kids should formally be British citizens—it was not a benevolent act of the Home Office. It is not any more legitimate to charge these citizens for the benefits they obtain as UK citizens than it would be to charge anyone in this Chamber or our own children. It seems the Home Office is conflating registration with the naturalisation of adults who choose to make the UK their home and ask for citizenship. That is totally different. Registration was put in place to compensate or to fill some of the gaps left by the end of citizenship by place of birth. The Home Office is subverting Parliament’s clear intentions by making it impossible to access those rights.

Secondly, the Home Office states that citizenship is not necessary—people can apply for leave to remain instead, which is an astonishing argument. How many hon. Members would be willing to give up their British nationality and settle for applying for leave to remain? There is no equivalence and it is outrageous to suggest that there is. That is particularly the case given that some of the kids affected would face a hellish path to settlement, which the Minister seems to be suggesting is a suitable alternative. Those not born here would require multiple applications at a cost of several thousand pounds on top of the cost to their wellbeing caused by the insecurity and stress of such a situation. It is not acceptable to say to someone whom Parliament says should be considered a British citizen, “Never mind, you can apply for leave to remain in your own country.”

Thirdly, the Home Office argues that it is fair for those using the immigration and nationality system to pay a contribution towards the broader costs of the immigration and nationality system, so that British taxpayers more generally do not have to. In some circumstances, I accept that that is true, but not here. The sum of money is not fair. As we have heard, it is huge and prohibitive, and we are talking about children. More fundamentally, these children are not migrants who chose to come in, but people entitled to citizenship. They were either born here or came here and grew up here without having had a choice.

[Deidre Brock (Edinburgh North and Leith) (SNP)]

I have a young constituent who has been refused citizenship after applying and her family paying that £1,012, despite the fact that her father is Scottish, she was born in Scotland and she has never lived anywhere else. Does my hon. Friend agree—developing the points he has been making—that it is difficult not to see this as profiteering by the UK Government to fund their hostile policies?

[Stuart C. McDonald]

I absolutely agree that it is profiteering. The Home Office tends to deny it is profiteering because it spends the money elsewhere, but the fact that profits are reinvested does not mean that they are not profits in the first place. It is outrageous to take the approach that the Home Office is suggesting. It is also contradictory, because it is saying that kids entitled to British citizenship should pay more so that other British citizens get to pay less. Both groups are British citizens. There is equivalence between them. The Home Office argument almost suggests that one form of citizenship is superior to another.

In conclusion, the Home Secretary has to all intents and purposes deprived far too many kids of their right in law to register as British by setting a fee for registering citizenship, which he has described as,

“a huge amount of money to ask children to pay”.

There are not even any fee waivers for those kids brought up in care, never mind a broader opportunity to apply for a reduction where the fee is unaffordable.

[Ruth Cadbury (Brentford and Isleworth) (Lab)]

I have been approached by the London Borough of Hounslow, which has a large number of people who were born all over the world. The local authority has many children in care whose parents were not born in the UK, so they have to apply for British citizenship. The local authority has to pay this extortionate fee, which means tens of thousands of pounds coming out of the children’s services budget, which is already terribly overstretched. The lead member and the officers have told me that they resent their overstretched budget being used to subsidise national Government. Does the hon. Gentleman agree with them that it is unacceptable?

[Stuart C. McDonald]

I agree entirely. It makes no sense. In short, I am asking—I think most hon. Members are asking—that the cost of the application be no more in any case than the administrative cost to the Home Office; that where there is an inability to meet the financial cost, there should be the opportunity to apply for a fee waiver; and that no fee should be applied in instances such as the one the hon. Lady suggested—when children are in the care system.

In conclusion, if the Prime Minister is serious about remedying “burning injustices” and if the Home Secretary genuinely wants a fairer system of fees, this is a clear and obvious place to start. I hope the Home Office and the Immigration Minister look at this again.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

--- Later in debate ---

[Caroline Nokes]

I will turn to the rights of children in comments that I will make in response to other Members, so I will come to my hon. Friend’s point very shortly.

The framework of charging, and in particular the principle of setting fees to reflect benefits accruing from a successful application, has enabled us to reflect the value that people get from the services that they receive, with indefinite leave to remain and citizenship rightly being the two most valuable outcomes.

[Stuart C. McDonald]

We are getting to the crux of the matter. Does the Minister accept that the statutory right to citizenship is completely different from an immigration application, indefinite leave to remain, or anything else? These kids have a right to citizenship. It is no more appropriate to charge them an extra fee to subsidise other parts of the immigration and nationality system than it would be to charge any of us a fee for our British nationality. It is a different thing altogether.

[Caroline Nokes]

If the hon. Gentleman allows me to make some progress, I will turn to the points he made in his opening speech.

During 2017-18, about 64,000 people were granted indefinite leave to remain and 123,000 were granted citizenship. Of those granted citizenship, more than 28,000 were minor children who were registered and were related to a British citizen, or children granted citizenship on a discretionary basis. In all cases the applicants either paid the due fee or had that fee paid on their behalf, reflecting the value placed on permanent residence and citizenship in the UK.

The charging framework for visa and immigration services delivered £1.35 billion of income in the last financial year, 2017-18. That helped to fund more than £620 million of costs associated with other immigration system functions, helping to maintain their effectiveness and security, and investment in ongoing service improvement. Setting fees at above the cost of processing an application has also helped us to set some fees at below cost—for example, short-term visit visas, in recognition of the significant economic benefits that tourists and other visitors bring to the whole of the UK. The subsidy for the circa 2.5 million short-term visit visas issued each year costs in the region of £90 million per annum, which can be afforded only by setting a wide range of other fees.

Let me make one other obvious point: setting fees at the level that we do—putting the burden on those who benefit from the services—reduces the burden on the Exchequer and on the general taxpayers of this country. It is easy, particularly in opposition, to call for fees or taxes to be reduced, but a responsible Government must balance the books. The loss of income that would result from any reduction in fees would have to be made up elsewhere, and there have been rather fewer suggestions of how that might be achieved.

Turning to the nub of the issue, safeguarding the welfare of children has always been and will continue to be a priority for the Home Office that it takes very seriously, for the reasons raised by hon. Members. I am concerned by any suggestion that the current fee levels for child registration are putting children off from registering, or making it more difficult for those entitled to register to operate in our society when they reach adulthood. For that reason, I met the hon. Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East just before the summer recess. He was accompanied on that occasion by some of those involved in campaigning. I listened very carefully to what they said and undertook to reflect on the matter, which is exactly what I am doing.

The issue is also very much on the radar of my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary. A number of Members, including my hon. Friend the Member for Henley (John Howell), referred to the comments he made when he appeared before the Home Affairs Committee. I am sorry that I am not in a position to give a firm answer today, but that certainly does not mean that either the Home Secretary or I are ignoring the issue or have put it on the backburner.

I reassure the Opposition spokesman, the hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Afzal Khan), that we are working hard, but it is a complex issue and decisions cannot be taken in isolation. They must be taken in the round, taking into account any wider implications, for example on fees charged to other groups of applicants and the impact on the Home Office budget. I wholly rebut the suggestion that the Home Office is profiteering. In 2017-18, the total Home Office expenditure was £12.9 billion, which was funded by £10.5 billion from the Exchequer and £2.5 billion generated from income.

In due course, we will also need to consider the findings of the review of the borders, immigration and citizenship chargeable services by the Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration that will conclude later this year. I will update the House as soon as I am in a position to do so. In the meantime, the Home Office will continue to consider granting leave to remain to a child who has lived in the UK continuously for seven years, or to a young person who is over 18 but under 25 and has lived continuously in the UK for half of their life. Such leave gives the person concerned the right to live, study and work in the UK and the right, in appropriate circumstances, to receive benefits from public funds.

An application can be made to the Home Office for the fee to be waived when the applicant is making one of a set of specified human rights-based claims for leave to remain and when there are reasons why the applicant cannot meet the payment required. Those human rights-based claims include those that are relevant to a child who has been in the UK continuously for seven years. That will ensure that the Home Office meets its core requirements to safeguard children and ensure their welfare, but we are working on a proportionate response to the representations made on child citizenship fees and will announce the outcome as soon as is practical.

Hon. Members have raised a number of points regarding young people who might be unaware of the requirement to register, and what specifically can be done to improve their knowledge of that. We are considering what more can be done using different channels. I am very conscious that, as Members have mentioned today, our immigration system can be complex, particularly for those who do not have experience or knowledge of it from the outset. It is important that we improve our processes and introduce online application systems that are intuitive and enable people to work through the parts of the process that apply to them and bypass those that do not. I am conscious that, as has been mentioned, young people perhaps do not go to gov.uk as a first port of call. We have to focus on what more we can do to better reach out to them through channels that they might use.

The hon. Member for Glasgow Central (Alison Thewliss) raised a range of issues. At one point she sought to conflate British citizenship with the settled status process for EU citizens who are living in the UK that we have recently launched, and which is currently in its private beta testing mode. It is a crucial part of our commitment to EU citizens, and the fees for it were set in agreement with the EU. It is wrong to conflate EU settled status with British citizenship because many EU citizens might choose, both now and in the future, to apply for British citizenship in addition to their settled status.

The hon. Lady mentioned young people who might discover that they do not have the same ability to travel abroad as their classmates for school trips, which is important. The Home Office works closely with education authorities to help to establish length of residence and reaches out to schools and those organising school trips to make those applications possible. We are willing to work with other public bodies to help make those applications as easy as we can.

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[Stuart C. McDonald]

I start by thanking all hon. Members for their very thoughtful contributions. The debate has served a very useful purpose in making clear to the Home Office that there is a consensus that citizenship should be not just celebrated, but positively encouraged and facilitated. There is a pretty broad and deep consensus in the Chamber, as well as a concern that the Home Office is prioritising making a profit from applications over ensuring that all those who have a statutory right to register as British citizens can do so. The fact that the Home Office reinvests some of the income in subsidising visit visas, for example, does not disguise the fact that it is a profit. In fact, that we are asking British children to subsidise visit visas makes this all the more absurd.

In response to some of the Minister’s arguments, I would re-emphasise that I do not regard the immigration system and immigration rules as in any way an adequate substitute for citizenship. The hon. Member for Moray (Douglas Ross) rightly mentioned awareness raising, which is as much a part of this issue as the fee itself. There is work to do. It was interesting to hear the Minister’s remarks on that. Whether it be through local authorities, schools or the social care system, we have to ensure that everyone is aware of the need to register in some circumstances.

Ultimately, the Home Office is going wrong in trying to conflate citizenship with the immigration rules and the naturalisation processes for adults. They are different things. The hon. Member for Ipswich (Sandy Martin) nailed it: this is a statutory right. The source of these kids’ right to citizenship is exactly the same as that of our right to citizenship—it is the British Nationality Act. We would be absolutely outraged if we were to be charged £1,000 to subsidise visit visa application fees in any other aspect of the immigration and nationality system, and it is just as outrageous that kids have been charged that massive fee as well. We pay a small administrative fee for a passport and we accept that an administrative fee might be appropriate for kids registering as British citizens—but it should not be anything beyond that.

I am grateful that the Minister is still listening. She is right that Members will continue to pursue the matter, but I very much look forward to hearing the result of her deliberations in due course. I very much hope that she will listen to the concerns that have been raised today.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered fees for registering children as British citizens.