Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Bill [HL]

The purpose of this amendment is to insert into the Bill a new clause dealing with the stateless children of British nationals. This amendment ensures that those stateless children born after 1 January 1983 to British nationals of any type, wherever in the world, are entitled to be registered as British citizens; and that the children of British Overseas Territories citizens can be registered as both British citizens and British Overseas Territories citizens. A British citizen born outside the UK and British Overseas Territories will be a British citizen by descent. That is, he or she will not be able automatically to transmit citizenship to his or her children. In addition, a British Overseas Territories citizen born outside the overseas territories will be a British Overseas Territories citizen by descent. That is, he or she will not be able automatically to transmit citizenship. It is not always possible for the children of British citizens to satisfy existing provisions for registration to obtain citizenship for want of compliance with residence requirements in the UK or in the British Overseas Territories. In certain circumstances, where the state of residence prohibits the acquisition of its nationality, often on racially discriminatory grounds, the children of such persons are left stateless. There is a problem here. Bearing in mind what the noble Lord has said about discussions in between times, I will not go through all the cases that I have before me, save to say that it would be interesting to learn from the Minister whether this applies to many people. In the briefings that I have received, we have been talking about, perhaps, a few dozen here or there, as in, for example, the case of children in Zambia, where it is conservatively estimated that about 20 children of Asian descent are affected by statelessness. We are not talking about hundreds or thousands in such cases. I want to put the scale of the problem on record. The current provisions, as the Minister will know, are found in the British Nationality Act 1981 and are very restrictive. They demand three years’ residence in the UK, with up to 270 days’ absence, in circumstances where the stateless child has no passport with which to be lawfully admitted to the UK or thereafter reside. They also provide for the registration of the child in a category of British nationality—meaning British overseas citizenship or British subject status—that is little better than statelessness. That is one of the categories of British nationality that carries with it no right of abode in the UK or any other country. This is important at this moment because, with the removal of the UK’s reservation on the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child—and I am sure that we will talk further about that this afternoon—this situation should no longer be tolerated by the Government. As drafted, the amendment would remove the requirement for the person born outside the UK and British Overseas Territories to be in the UK or an overseas territory for three years ending on the date of application. It would further ensure that the person is entitled to be registered in a category of British nationality that carries with it the right of abode so as to be entitled to live and work here—that is to say, to be registered as a British citizen and, as the case may be, as a British Overseas Territories citizen. The amendment would bring rights to stateless children of British nationals born outside the UK and British Overseas Territories. That is an important matter to address, particularly in light of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. I beg to move.