My Lords, I recognise the Minister’s phrase about not being able to rectify all the wrongs of history but I do not agree with that expression. I think that we ought to remedy the wrongs of history and this would have been an excellent opportunity to do so in the case of what I think my noble friend acknowledges would be a very small number of people. However, I also recognise the realities of the situation—that, unlike the two previous amendments on which there were Divisions, I would not be so successful if I were to seek the opinion of the House.
Therefore, I will withdraw the amendment but, first, I should like to say how grateful I am to my noble friend the Minister for what he said about the amendment to enable illegitimate children born before 1983 to acquire British citizenship in circumstances where they would already have been able to do so if they had been legitimate. I hope that in our final draft, following the previous two, which the Minister mentioned, we will
give the Secretary of State discretion to waive requirements that may be imposed on a parent in the event of the parent being unco-operative or no longer able to fulfil the requirement by reason of incapacity or death. I am also concerned that in the final draft we should avoid any ambiguity between registration and consular registration and avoid imposing any consular registration requirements which the parents of an illegitimate child might not have met, bearing in mind the stigma attached to illegitimacy in those days.
When my noble friend comes to produce the third draft at Third Reading, I should be most grateful if those points could be borne in mind. Meanwhile, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.