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British Nationality
[ 20 OCTOBER 1981 ]
the House, as has been done in other places—it should have been retained. It is simple, it is clear, it is familiar. It avoids statelessness on our soil, and it encourages the integration and the confidence in this country of all who live here.
Instead it has been replaced by a complicated provision which is a mixture of birth, descent and immigration status. For the first time in our history a number of children born in the United Kingdom will be stateless, running quite contrary to our national traditions. This fundamental change in our law has perhaps caused more alarm and anxiety among Britain's ethnic minorities than has any other provision in the Bill, because it introduces a new uncertainty into an important area of our law. Because the definition of "settled" in Clause 50 relies on factors that are too variable and unclear what constitutes ordinarily resident" and who is without doubt free of conditions regarding his stay under the 1971 Immigration Act-many children will grow up without it being clear whether or not they are citizens. The 10-year rule in Clause 1(4), to which the noble Lord might refer in reply, does not overcome that uncertainty. Whether it offers any remedy at all will not be clear until we see the new immigration rules that are yet to be laid. If they are so drafted that the children concerned are deportable, Clause 1(4) will have little value in practice.
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I tried to get an assurance on that point on the first day of the Report stage of the Bill when, at the end of the debate, I asked the noble Lord, Lord Belstead, whether he would give an undertaking that under the immigration rules no stateless child would be deported from this country. The Minister gave no answer, and the Government have persisted in rejecting an amendment proposing that none of the children born here would actually be stateless. Perhaps we shall have an advance on that position before the end of the day's debate; I sincerely hope so.
As the noble Lord has said, it is the case that major changes in the Bill introduced in this House-and I gladly pay tribute to the skilful performance of the revisory powers of this House-greatly liberalised the provisions on citizenship by descent for British citizens. It is also true that the emphasis on citizenship by descent was greatly increased as the Bill progressed. We welcomed and supported those basic proposals because our guiding principle has been that people who at commencement are British nationals should all have a national status that gives some protection to themselves and their children and that preserves existing rights. But that guiding principle, which we have sought to maintain at every stage, to be followed for all existing British nationals, has been rejected by the Government whenever we have raised the question of what is to happen to those who receive British overseas citizenship. They would not be able to pass on citizenship to their children, even for one generation. Under the Bill there will be disturbing contrasts in entitlement, and perhaps I may be permitted to give one or two
illustrations.
In future a child born in, say, the Argentine to a father and a mother both born in Argentina, and one of whose four grandparents was born in the United Kingdom, will be entitled to register as a British citizen if his father once spent three years here, say as a student.
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That is provided for in, I think, Clause 3, as amended. But a child born in Malawi to parents who are both British overseas citizens will be born stateless because, unhappily, Malawi limits citizenship to the child of a Malawian citizen parent of African race. That, I fear, is a reversal of racial prejudice which one is unhappy to see emerging in Malawi. The first child in that situation will be Argentinian as well as British; it will have two citizenships: the second child will have nothing.
One might take another example of this difference of treatment under Clause 39 of the Bill. A Canadian citizen whose mother was born in this country, even if he has no British passport but only a Canadian one, will have the right of abode here under Clause 39 of the Bill. He will have an absolute right of entry and employment in the United Kingdom. He will have the right of abode and the right to work in two coun- tries. But a British man from Uganda who fled from the persecution of Amin, was not admitted here at the time and so went (as he thought, temporarily) to India, will have no right of abode or employment anywhere. So that this gross difference of treatment to different categories of people is still maintained in the Bill; and I regret to say it is the black people who will be most adversely affected.
My Lords, we began consideration of this Bill as a Bill which was unbalanced. It is still unbalanced, and its confusion and complexity do not obliterate that unhappy fact. Last week the Government saw fit to reject an amendment by the noble Lord, Lord Geddes, which would at least have declared and clarified who were British nationals. It would have affirmed an undeniable fact; namely, that all the categories of being British in the Bill-being a British citizen, being a citizen of the British dependent terri- tories (now happily reversed in its order of description) and being a British overseas citizen-have at least one thing in common: they all denote British nationality in some degree or other. It would have denoted that they would all be British nationals. I submit, without covering the whole of the ground that we covered before, that to declare this not only would have clarified the law for our own purposes but would have been of great value to those affected in their dealings with the authorities and inhabitants of other countries. It would have been an affirmation of continuing British responsibility and of British connection.
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The Government response was to say that to declare that people who undoubtedly are British nationals, actually are so under this Bill would (I quote)“ serve only to generate confusion ”. I quote from the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne. Is it surprising that such a response has added to anxieties that already existed? The tragedy is that this Bill comes before Parliament at a time of increasing racial tension which we fear the Bill will exacerbate. It is a moment when this country's commitment to racial equality needs to be affirmed and confirmed. The Bill fails to rise to that| challenge. It should have offered encouragement and a sense of security to British people. It has done neither. My Lords, I beg to move the amend- ment which stands in my name.
Moved, as an amendment to the Motion, That the Bill do now pass, at end to insert ("but this House deplores that, if enacted, the Bill will result in injustice,
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