Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many people had their British citizenship removed under the British Nationality Act 1981 in each of the last ten years.

The British Nationality Act 1981 provides the Secretary of State with powers to deprive a person of citizenship status only under the circumstances set out at sections 40(2) and 40(3) of the Act. Section 40(2) allows the Secretary of State to deprive any person of British citizenship, should they deem it conducive to the public good to do so. Section 40(3) allows the Secretary of State to deprive a person who has obtained citizenship by naturalisation or registration, where the Secretary of State is satisfied that citizenship was obtained by means of fraud, false representation, or concealment of material fact.

Detail on the numbers of conducive deprivation orders made under Section 40(2) of the 1981 British Nationality Act, are published in the Government Transparency Report: Disruptive and Investigatory Powers. Six reports have been published to date providing the number of deprivations of citizenship orders made up until the end of 2021 and can be found at the below links:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/hm-government-transparency-report-on-the-use-of-disruptive-and-investigatory-powers

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/disruptive-and-investigatory-powers-hm-government-transparency-report

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/disruptive-and-investigatory-powers-transparency-report-2018

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/transparency-report-disruptive-powers-2018-to-2019

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/disruptive-powers-2020

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/counter-terrorism-disruptive-powers-report-2021

More recent data will be published in future publications in relation to deprivation of British citizenship 40(2) of the British Nationality Act 1981.

Section 40(3) of the 1981 British Nationality Act, allows for deprivation of citizenship where fraud, false representation or concealment of material facts have been used to obtain British citizenship. Since February 2020 these figures have been published via the Transparency report on asylum data, which can be found using the link below:

Immigration and protection data: Q2 2023 - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)