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British Nationality
[LORD ELWYN-JONES.]
[ LORDS]
greatly increase the number of stateless men, women and children, create new uncertainties and feelings of insecurity and exacerbate racial tension ".)-Lord Elwyn-Jones.)
4.5 p.m.
Lord Avebury: My Lords, the noble Lord the Minister devoted a great part of his remarks to an analysis of the concessions which were extracted so painfully from the Government during the many hours that we spent considering this Bill, and I share his pleasure in welcoming the improvements that your Lordships have seen fit to make. But I must agree with the noble and learned Lord, Lord Elwyn-Jones, that these changes do not alter the fundamental objections that we had to the Bill when it first appeared in your Lordships' House. The concessions, it seems to me, were mainly ones that were designed to placate white middle-class opinion; and, indeed, the main defeat of the Government was occasioned by a coalition of sentimental imperialists, Europeans and those who would like to see the whole scheme of citizenship in the Bill undermined.
So, with respect, this House has not been able to play the role, which is frequently assigned to it by its defenders, of the dispassionate and acute critic of legislation. We have succeeded in altering some words here and there, as the noble Lord, Lord Belstead, has explained, but we have left the edifice of the Bill untouched. As Pope said:
So well-bred spaniels civilly delight
In mumbling of the game they dare not bite ".
My Lords, it is simple to outline in a few words the issues which divide us from the Government. We do not agree that citizenship of the United Kingdom and Colonies should be replaced as it is, by a three-tier system, the bottom rung of which is occupied by people whose so-called citizenship does not confer on them the right to live in any part of the globe. We deplore, as the noble and learned Lord did, the abandonment of the jus soli, which for the last 700 years has meant that every child born on the territory of this country has been one of our citizens; and we very much regret the Government's failure to heed the criticisms of this aspect of the Bill which were advanced by the most reverend Primate on behalf of the Church of England as well as by, I think, every single other Christian denomination as well.
Third, we do not accept that in a matter as important as naturalisation the Executive should have a virtually unfettered discretion, subject to the right of access to the courts. We believe it would have been much better, as we said originally in 1977, if there had been a system of objective tests of citizenship in place of the subjective and complicated tests, including the test of character, which we have retained in this Bill. At the very least, we believe that there should have been the modest rights of appeal, both on entitlement and on discretionary decisions, which were proposed last week by the noble Viscount, Lord Colville.
My Lords, on these three issues the Government have been totally obdurate. But even the minor changes, which in many respects would have simplified the Bill and alleviated anomalies, have in many cases been summarily rejected by the Government. Ministers
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would not entertain the idea that citizens of United Kingdom and Colonies already here should become British citizens on commencement, or even that those persons should have the right of abode. They turned down most of the suggestions for reducing statelessness—a point which has rightly been empha- sised by the noble and learned Lord-and they declined to give any assurances on the question of fees, which is not a trivial matter for many of the people who face naturalisation in place of the present system of registration.
I do not think it can be contested by the Government that in passing this Bill they will be causing uncertainty and insecurity, as the Motion suggests. The evidence of the Citizens' Advice Bureaux has already been quoted several times in the course of our proceedings, but many of us know more directly, both from our own postbags and from conversations we have had with people in the communities, how widespread are the fears aroused among people belonging to ethnic minorities particu- larly. These fears are not concerned simply with the actual contents of this measure, and therefore cannot be removed by explanation, however desirable that may be in itself. They stem, I think, from the perception of the trends of immigration and nationality legislation over the years: the successive tightening of the screw by way of restrictions on the right of entry which were imposed in the 1962 Act, the 1965 White Paper, the 1968 Act and the 1971 Act, to which must be added, of course, the expanding interpretation by the courts of the term "illegal entry ".
Now, on top of all that, we have this Bill, which removes citizenship from people who enjoy it now and makes it harder for Commonwealth citizens to acquire our citizenship in the future. So brown and black people ask themselves; where is this process ultimately going to lead? And although I should say that most of them recognise that Mr. Whitelaw would not travel very much further down the road, they can hear the demands for his removal from the extreme Right, and they can read about the policies of the Monday Club, which are not always easy to distinguish from those of the National Front; and then say, Where will this process lead to in the end?”
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The present Government have given a pledge that certain United Kingdom passport holders formerly resident in East Africa will continue to be admitted to this country under the special quota voucher scheme notwithstanding the fact that they become British overseas citizens on commencement. However, it has been made as difficult as possible for them by reducing the number of voucher allocations to only 500 a year and by requiring dependants who reach the age of 18 to apply separately; so that, without any increase in the numbers in the queue, it gets longer and longer. If a young person gets married, he or she is instantly struck off the list and, of course, there are those old people who die during the waiting period. There is attrition of the numbers of people wanting to come here and yet the queue gets longer.
Now, the people in this tiny group can see all too plainly that the Tory Government have done their best to stop them from entering Britain-short of repudiating the longstanding undertakings which have been repeated several times since they were given initially by the late Iain Macleod. Therefore, people