Page 49 main body of travellers. The fixing of the criterion set out in the Bill does not, however, mean that persons who do not "belong" to the United Kingdom within that definition would necessarily be excluded. For instance, a British subject who could not be regarded as belonging to any other British territory would not in any circumstances be excluded and it would be possible to arrange, if experience suggested that this was desirable, for the passports of such people and of other British subjects long resident in the United Kingdom to be so endorsed, when they had once been identified, as to ensure that they would not encounter difficulty on subsequent journeys.
7. The Bill would also give power to deport from this country a British subject or citizen of the Republic of Ireland, unless he had been born within the United Kingdom, the Channel Islands or the Isle of Man, or both of his parents had been resident in any of those territories when he was born, or he had been ordinarily resident for the last previous seven years in any of those areas. While this provision does not on the face of it discriminate between citizens of Commonwealth countries on the one hand and Colonial subjects on the other it would as the British Nationality Act, 1948, stands make for unequal treatment because under that Act citizens of self-governing Commonwealth countries are entitled to be registered as citizens of the United Kingdom and Colonies after one year's residence here and in the case of certain Commonwealth countries they lose their original citizenship if they so register. The effect in such a case would be to make it impossible to deport the individual after he had acquired United Kingdom citizenship, because there would no longer be a country to which he could be deported.
8. It would clearly be undesirable in an attempt to overcome this difficulty to reduce to only one year the period of continuous residence in the United Kingdom, during which British subjects from overseas would be liable to deportation. An alternative course would be to reduce the period of continuous residence to five years (which would conform to the practice in certain overseas territories) and at the same time to amend the Act of 1948 by extending the period of residence in the United Kingdom qualifying for United Kingdom citizenship to five years, giving the Home Secretary power in his discretion to permit registration within a shorter period in suitable cases.
9. The Bill provides that the circumstances in which the Secretary of State could make a Deportation Order are to be specified in the Order in Council. It would thus be possible to provide, as in the Aliens Order, simply that the Secretary of State could make a Deportation Order in any case in which it appeared to him to be conducive to the public good to do so. The effect would be that the Secretary of State could not be required to state the grounds on which he had acted and his action would not be subject to any kind of judicial review. That would no doubt attract criticism and it may be that such a wide discretion in the Secretary of State would be more easily accepted if provision were made for his action to be taken after judicial enquiry or to be subject to review by some form of judicial process. The wide discretion under the Bill as it stands could also have repercussions in Colonial territories. To prevent arbitrary decisions as far as possible in deportation cases in the Colonies, policy in regard to the deportation of British subjects from Colonial territories has hitherto aimed at defining by statute, in broad terms, the grounds on which such individuals could be deported, and by stipulating (without affecting the discretion of the Executive) that, before a deportation order is made, a Judge or Magistrate is to hold an enquiry (if necessary in Chambers) and make a report to the Governor on the facts and on any point of law which may be raised. If no provisions for judicial process were included in the draft United Kingdom legislation it would be difficult to resist pressure on the part of Colonial Governments to introduce a similarly wide measure of discretion into their own legislation, and consequently to create the danger of arbitrary deportation of British subjects.
10. In the view of the Home Secretary, who would be responsible for exercising these powers, it is, however, most desirable that the power should not be subject to detailed regulation in the statute and that the Secretary of State should have the wide discretion which the Bill confers. Experience in the case of aliens has shown that it would be difficult to draft detailed provisions covering the wide variety of cases which may arise, and there are a small proportion of cases in which it would be contrary to the public interest that the Secretary of State should have to specify the grounds on which he is acting. A provision which set out in detail the grounds on which Deportation Orders could be made would thus be
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