Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Bill [HL]

My Lords, in my remarks I want to focus on the part of the Bill that is described as ““citizenship””, not because other parts of the Bill are not important—I believe, for example, that the questions raised by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd of Berwick, and those which I suspect will be raised by other Members of the House are important—but because, as the Minister has stated, the issue is one which the Prime Minister asked me to examine. That resulted in the report that was produced last year entitled Citizenship: Our Common Bond. Speaking in this Second Reading debate gives me the opportunity to say something about that and to express publicly my thanks, not only to the non-governmental organisations that participated—there were many, some of which have been mentioned today—but to the many other people, individual citizens, people seeking to be citizens and refugees whom I met up and down the country and with whom I was fortunate to debate these questions. It has already been said that perhaps this Bill is simply the tip of the iceberg; I am not sure how happy a phrase that may be. I am not a seafarer, but I have always understood icebergs to be rather lurking, forbidding and dangerous things beneath the surface, and I hope that citizenship is not that. Certainly, as other Members of the House have said already, this Bill is only a very partial picture of what is to come; perhaps dots of paint on a canvas or pieces of a jigsaw where it is not yet possible to see what the full picture will be. That makes it more difficult to judge what the totality of the approach of the Government is going to be. One issue that came across very clearly in the course of my review was the two meanings of the term ““citizenship””—citizenship as nationality, which is what this Bill deals with when it touches on citizenship, and citizenship as membership of a society, sharing a sense of belonging and sharing a sense of aspirations. It seemed to me that these were different concepts, but concepts that had grown too far apart. There were people who were legal citizens who did not feel that they belonged to our society and, equally, there were people who had not attained the status of citizen legally as nationals, but who played an active, valuable part in it and who shared absolutely the same aspirations and concerns as the people living next door to them. Some of the difference between those two concepts is difficult to deal with. We cannot and should not feel that we can compel people to feel that they belong, but we could do more to bring those two concepts together. The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Lincoln questioned the concept of earned citizenship—I support that and want to say something about the detail of it at some stage during the passage of the Bill—by saying that for many of us, we do not earn citizenship but acquire it simply as a result of birth. In my view, and in the thrust of my report, that should not stop us from looking at ways in which people, although they have acquired that legal status, can be encouraged to a much greater sense of what being a citizen means and, if not earned citizenship for British-born nationals, at least learnt citizenship. A number of the recommendations made in my report, not just about education and schools, but about whether we do enough to have a national narrative of citizenship and whether there is perhaps more ritual that we could engage in that would encourage that, seemed to me to be important. A credit-based system for acquiring citizenship is in principle a good thing, because it makes it clearer that becoming a citizen carries with it responsibilities, not just the ability to stand in a shorter queue at Heathrow. For those reasons, it seems right to be able to change the length of that journey through participating in the community in a stronger and more active way and demonstrating language proficiency. The details, I know from looking at this issue, are enormously difficult, and it is right that noble Lords have asked the Minister to say more about how they are to be dealt with. The main point that I had wanted to make was to express my hope that during the passage of the Bill, or perhaps alongside it, we may learn more about the Government’s approach to these wider, complex, interlocking, but important, questions. I do not for a moment pretend that any of my recommendations are the right answers; I would like to think that at least I have identified some of the questions. They are difficult questions, but they need to be dealt with. Citizenship is a highly important topic in an era when shared cultural and historical links often no longer seem enough to bind us together; the nature of our society has changed. Citizenship is more than rules on nationality. It is not about Britishness, at least when it is seen as a political gimmick in the devolution debate. It is about how one creates a society in which its members feel that they belong and, therefore, share the same concerns, hopes and aspirations as their fellow citizens. Issues such as the name given to people who have the right to be here is important in that context. Noble Lords have asked why it would help to call someone a probationary citizen, rather than someone who has leave to remain or leave to enter. To my mind, there is merit in making it clear that the person should participate in the concept and the responsibilities of citizenship, but we lose him if he does not obey what is expected of him by his fellow citizens. Time for debate is limited, and I am hoping that we will hear the Minister’s remarks and finish by the time indicated by the Chief Whip before the final business of the day, as I have a part-heard case in a foreign country which requires that I leave on a very late plane tonight. I hope to be able to hear the Minister’s final words. If I do not, I apologise to him and the House. I end by inviting him to find an opportunity to say why this Bill will advance these broader concepts. He said that this Bill was the Home Office’s contribution. Finally, as expressed in one of the final comments in my report, I regret the fact that citizenship is dealt with in a piecemeal way across government and recommend that we perhaps should look to something like—not another department; heaven forefend that—an office of citizenship that would look at the different considerations and see how they fit together, so that we do not have a Home Office Bill on citizenship, but a government approach to citizenship.