UK Borders Bill

That is interesting in itself. I found this a fascinating discussion. I have listened to the debate with more interest than I thought I would and I have listened very carefully to what the noble Lord, Lord Goodhart, said. I do not know a great deal about the noble Lord’s personal background, but I had thought he might have a personal angle on this and I believe it helped him to illustrate the case with a degree of insight that otherwise would not have been there. I shall summarise our case. Clearly, this matter will not be resolved today. Before 1983, British women were unable to pass on their citizenship in the same way as men, but there was discretion within the British Nationality Act 1948 to confer citizenship on any minor by registration. As noble Lords have said, on 7 February 1979 the then Home Secretary announced that he would exercise this discretion in favour of any child of a UK-born mother who applied for registration before his or her 18th birthday. We recognised that some will have learned of the 1979 policy change too late to benefit from it. We therefore changed the law in 2002 so that there is now provision in the British Nationality Act 1981 for a person to be registered as a British citizen, on application and payment of the prescribed fee, if he or she would have been registered in accordance with the policy announced in 1979 had the necessary application been made while he or she was still a minor. In other words, the person concerned must have been a minor on 7 February 1979. We were not persuaded that it would be right to go any further than that. This was in light of the principle that an adult seeking to be granted British citizenship should normally be able to demonstrate on the basis of his personal connections with this country why his application should succeed. It is also the case that those who would benefit from any further relaxation of the requirements in the 1981 Act are at least 46 years old. Therefore, they are, one assumes, well-established elsewhere. Their situation may be the legacy of legislation that most of us now consider otiose, repugnant and unacceptable, but it is a legacy that cannot simply be ignored.