UK Parliament / Open data

Nationality and Borders Bill

Proceeding contribution from James Daly (Conservative) in the House of Commons on Tuesday, 7 December 2021. It occurred during Debate on bills on Nationality and Borders Bill.

It is better to move on from such an appalling speech.

Amendment 12, tabled by my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis), which would remove clause 9, is a quite straightforward legal matter. However, as I have listened to the debate, I have thought on occasion that hon. Members have been debating a clause that does not exist or is not in the Bill. As I said in my intervention on the hon. Member for Enfield, Southgate (Bambos Charalambous), the Labour Government, through the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002—as well as through further legislation in 2016—codified and ensured that a Home Secretary of whatever political party had the power to exclude or take away somebody’s citizenship in certain circumstances. If there was an objection to that principle, an amendment should have been tabled. Anyone in the House had the opportunity to do that. However, the only amendment tabled on this measure concerns the notice period—that is it. Let us therefore have a debate on the notice period. If the Labour party opposes in principle what the previous Labour Government did in 2002 and 2016, I am certain that its Front-Bench team would have tabled an amendment.

Let us get to the notice period and what we are arguing about, on which important issues were raised. The right hon. Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn) made a point that I hope the Minister will address. If an order is made without notice, does the appeal process start when the order is made or when the order is received, as is currently the norm and the law?

I could read out some of the scaremongering and appalling things said about the Bill, but I do not want to go down into that. My hon. Friend the Member for Peterborough (Paul Bristow) gave a magnificent speech on that. I find it surprising, because if this or any other Government wanted to do things of which they are being accused, they could do them now. What does it matter whether people have notice or not? There was the genuinely unbelievable suggestion that the Bill could be used to address climate change activists. The Opposition are genuinely scraping the barrel when it comes down to that level. I am here to tell my constituents that that is scaremongering. There is a requirement for exceptional circumstances in clause 9, which are there to protect them, and no one has anything to fear from the clause at all.

About this proceeding contribution

Reference

705 c253 

Session

2021-22

Chamber / Committee

House of Commons chamber

Subjects

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