Armed Conflict: Syria

(asked on 20th February 2019) - View Source

Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many (a) British nationals and (a) dual-British nationals returning from the conflict in Syria have had their British citizenship revoked.


Answered by
Ben Wallace Portrait
Ben Wallace
This question was answered on 1st March 2019

The British Nationality Act 1981 provides the Secretary of State with powers to deprive a person of citizenship status. 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.

Three reports have been published to date in 2015, 2017 and 2018, providing figures for section 40(2) deprivations since 2010, this is the deprivation power most likely to be applied to those returning from Syria. The links to these reports are below:

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/473603/51973_Cm_9151_Transparency_Accessible.pdf

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/593668/58597_Cm_9420_Transparency_report_web.pdf

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

For reasons of national security, it would not be appropriate to provide a breakdown of the citizenship of those who have returned from the conflict in Syria.

When seeking to deprive on the basis that to do so is conducive to the public good, the law requires that this action proceed only if the individual concerned would not be left stateless.

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