Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Bill [Lords]

I think we should make progress. The Government have not learned from this and have tried to introduce in the Bill retrospective changes to the citizenship rules. As the hon. Gentleman has just pointed out, our colleagues in another place tabled an amendment and, again, the Government were defeated. I hope that the Minister might recognise that he has not just lost the court case and a vote, but he has also lost the argument; I hope we will hear from him on that. The key point is the date of commencement. That will establish whether there are remaining elements of retrospection in the Government's system. I will be interested to hear the Minister tell us when he proposes to apply the new rules. One other amendment that I should speak to is our amendment 22, which concerns the activity condition. The Bill introduces an activity condition for qualifying for citizenship, but it is not clear what could be covered by it—it is not given, but left to be clarified in secondary legislation. There are a number of legitimate concerns to be expressed about what will be covered by that condition. We have seen some introductory documents from the Government, and there are a number of areas where many of us would have great concern about what might be involved. The proposals threaten to be both expensive and bureaucratic. Also, the broad term "activity" does not seem to be restricted to volunteering, which was the Home Office's original intention.