UK Borders Bill

My Lords, I warmly congratulate my noble friend Lord Goodhart on finally achieving a solution to a problem that has, as he pointed out, been canvassed on numerous occasions going back to 2002, when we raised it not only in respect of the NIA Act of that year but in detailed discussions with the then Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Filkin, in an attempt to find a way through. We persuaded the Government then that the child of a foreign father and British mother born overseas after 7 February 1961 should have the right to be registered as a British citizen. However, we were not able then or since—until Monday of this week—to persuade the Government that discrimination against British mothers whose children were born before the cut-off date was wrong and illogical. Their right to transmit citizenship to their children was not equal to that of fathers who married foreign women, who had always had that right. Ministers kept repeating, as if it was an argument, the view that there had to be a cut-off point, as though that justified a situation in which children in the same family born before or after the cut-off date had different citizenship rights. As the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, said in Committee, we were all struggling to hear from the Minister about the virtue that attaches to 1961. The Minister had no answer. My noble friend Lord Goodhart suggested that there was at least some logic to a cut-off date of 1 January 1949, because nearly every woman who married a foreign citizen before that date took the citizenship of the husband. For that reason, as well as the additional passage of time, hardly any persons would benefit from an earlier date. I consulted the chairman of the organisation CAMPAIGNS, Mr Michael Turberville, who tells me that of the 300 people on his books only one was born earlier than 1949, and he had been resident in this country for some 40 years and therefore qualified to apply for citizenship. We are delighted that the Government have at last come around to our point of view on the matter, and we welcome the assurances they gave in the Minister's letter of 9 October that the provision would be enacted as soon as possible—not by the indirect route, which my noble friend had to choose ingeniously to get within the Long Title, but by conferring full citizenship on these individuals even though it means that they will have to wait a little longer. My noble friend said that how the law used women in this matter was contrary to the principles of gender equality, and his amendment had the support of womenkind. It prompts me to ask an additional question: will the Government now repeal our reservation on nationality to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, which it seems was entered into solely to protect us from complaints about this discrimination? I remind the Minister of the case of Mrs Constance Salgado, whose name I have mentioned in previous debates. She was barred from making a complaint to the committee on the elimination of discrimination against women simply because of the resolution that we entered to the convention. Mrs Salgado married a Columbian citizen and lives in Columbia. I sent the Minister, Mr Byrne, a rather nice picture of Mrs Salgado and her son, who came to dinner with me recently. We were discussing this issue because she brought with her the son who was born before 7 February 1961 so is not a British citizen, whereas her younger son, who was born after the date, is a British citizen. Her family very neatly illustrates the paradox of the anomaly of this date. I hope that the Minister will be prepared to consider—not perhaps this afternoon, but at his leisure—whether as well as introducing the legislation that confers citizenship on these people he will move towards the repeal of the reservation entered into on the convention.