I hope that the manuscript amendments, which were tabled by Opposition Front Benchers, are indeed available in the Vote Office.
As I said, in December 2007, one of my predecessors deprived the individual of his British citizenship. That gave rise to lengthy litigation, which culminated at a Supreme Court hearing in June 2013, with the verdict promulgated in October 2013. The Court—disappointingly to my mind—rejected my assertion that the individual could reassert his Iraqi nationality and that his failure to do so was the cause of his statelessness. Its conclusion was that the question was simply whether the person held another nationality at the date of the order depriving them of British citizenship.
Having studied the Supreme Court determination carefully and considered my options, I asked my officials to explore the possibility of legislating to address the key point identified in the al-Jedda case, namely that our domestic legislation, and the changes brought about in the 2002 and 2006 Acts, go further than is necessary to honour our international obligations in terms of limiting our ability to render people stateless.
That may have been well intended. It was done, as I believe, in anticipation of signing the 1997 European convention on nationality. We have never signed that convention and this Government have no plans to do so.
It is also important to stress—it is a point that has been made by a couple of Members already in interventions—that I have discussed this at length with colleagues across Government; it is not something I have just decided on. Given the importance of the subject matter, we wanted the time to ensure that we got it right. Indeed, I had a meeting with my hon. Friends in
the Liberal Democrat parliamentary party on 4 December last year to discuss the proposal and listen to their concerns and the issues they wished to raise.
The United Kingdom has signed the 1961 UN convention on the reduction of statelessness. We made a declaration on ratifying that convention to allow for the prospect of leaving a person stateless in certain circumstances. Those circumstances include the ability to deprive a naturalised person of their citizenship, regardless of whether or not it might leave them stateless, where that person has conducted themselves in a manner seriously prejudicial to the vital interests of Her Britannic Majesty.