937
British Nationality Bill
28 JANUARY 1981 EXTRACTS FROM NATIONALITY
ers “Oh".] This is most important. My mother and father were both born in Britain. I was born in Tanzania, married it itain and have a lovely daughter who has a full entitlement to citizenship. My brother was born in Edinburgh. He may marry a German. Their children may have full entitlement to citizenship. My sister was born in Blantyre, in Nyasaland. She married a South African. Some of the children were born in South Africa. Do they have entitlement under the Bill to come and live in Britain? I do not think so. Will the right hon. Gentleman give me an assurance that, under clause 2 (3),the children of missionaries have full entitlement to settle in Britain if they wish to do so, and have equal rights with Crown citizens and business occupations abroad?
Mr. Whitelaw: I think that the sensible answer I must give the hon. Gentleman is that it would be a very unwise Minister who gave an off-the-cuff answer to detailed provisions affecting particular cases. Of course, either my hon. Friend the Minister of State or I will give the hon. Gentleman a full answer in writing, but for me to give an answer on the Floor of the House in the middle of a general speech would be quite wrong, especially if it were misleading.
•
Mr. Faulds: Why should such a trade, which is not in the service of the Crown, except another crown, be dismissed as having equal rights to Crown servants, business men and chaps in international organisations? Why should the people serving as servants of God not have the assurance that I am asking of the right hon. Gentleman.
Mr. Whitelaw: I make the same answer. The hon. Gentleman can make his speech. I have made up my mind finally that, except in the case of right hon. and hon. Gentlemen on the Opposition Front Bench or in the case of major problems raised on my side, I will not give way again. I do not think it makes sense to do so. Obviously I have to preserve the position of some senior figures in my party and the senior figures on the Opposition Front Bench, but I am not prepared to go further than that.
(Bolsover): That is
Mr. Dennis Skinner discrimination.
:
Mr. Whitelaw: Yes, that is exactly what it is, and that is what it is meant to be.
Clause 3(1) continues the existing discretion conferred on me by section 7 of the 1948 Act to register any minor child.
Clause 4 deals with the acquisition of citizenship by naturalisation. Subsection (2) makes special arrange- ments, to which I have already referred, for the acquisition of citizenship by the husband or wife of an existing citizen. The arrangements are set out in detail in schedule 1. The main point to note is that a husband or wife of a British citizen can apply for naturalisation only after three years' residence whereas for other persons the requirement will be five years' residence.
The present arrangements are that a wife, but not a husband, has an entitlement to acquire citizenship immediately on marriage. That would cease. There would, however, be a transitional period, during which wives would be able to apply for citizenship on the same basis as now. They would be entitled to citizenship if they were still married to the man concerned and if he had not in the meantime renounced citizenship.
Schedule 1 also sets out the basic preliminary requirements for naturalisation. These are five years'
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applicant for STRY naturalisation must spend acullin the courts. This witem Taken enable people to know where they stand.
I recognise, of course, that there are those who argue: that the criteria for naturalisation should be more specific-"objective" is the term often used-and that there should be a right of appeal against refusal. The Green Paper produced by the Labour Government and the White Paper, however, contained powerful arguments against introducing appeal rights in this area. Paragraph 60 of the Green Paper said that,
"the judgments which have to be made in this area are essentially subjective, and matters of this kind are not easily justiciable. applicants who were refused on security or similar grounds could not in any case be given a right of appeal because of the difficulty of disclosing in public the information that had led to the refusal".
I am bound to say that the arguments against an appeal system remain compelling. Such a system would certainly be expensive in terms of public service manpower and there would be long delays if it were grafted on to the existing immigration appeals machinery or if the burden. were placed on our already overloaded High Court. Furthermore, because it would mean a system of objective tests, it is difficult to see how the existing criteria for citizenship could continue to operate.
Clauses 5 and 6 would preserve for varying transitional periods the right to register at present possessed by certain categories. Clause 7 gives an entitlement to register to those citizens of the United Kingdom and Colonies who are at present initially subject to immigration control, but become patrial after five years' residence here. Clause 8 confers a right to register on persons who are currently entitled to resume our citizenship, having previously renounced it.
Clause 9 ensures that, with one exception, anyone who is at present a citizen of the United Kingdom and Colonies with the right of abode becomes a British citizen at cement. Subsection (2) sets out the exception to which I have referred. It was mentioned in paragraph 19 of the White Paper. Basically the subsection corrects an anomaly. At present, if a woman who is a citizen of the United Kingdom and Colonies has a child overseas, and that child is stateless, it has an entitlement to registration as a citizen of the United Kingdom and Colonies. A side effect of acquisition of citizenship in that way is to give the child the right of abode in the United Kingdom even if the mother does not have it. That is clearly illogical. So the Bill provides that such children will acquire the same status as their mothers, whether that be British citizenship or citizenship of the British dependent territories or British overseas citizenship.
I come to part II of the Bill. There is no need for me to go into its clauses in detail since they are broadly similar to the provisions for British citizenship. There are, however, one or two points of principle which I should make.
The first is that the Bill provides for a composite citizenship covering all the dependent territories. I am sure that this is right. We are aware of the strength of feeling in Hong Kong on the need to maintain the ties between that territory and the United Kingdom. I should like to reaffirm that the proposed legislation is in no way intended to
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Private notes are available after approval.