729
British Nationality
[20 OCTOBER 1981]
listen to him, but painful, heartrending for the people who are affected by the inequities of this Bill. To see this country, this House, enacting a Bill which is basically unjust, which is going to cause increased hardship, increased suffering, increased incquities, for no good purpose whatsoever, is indeed a sad experience. For those reasons, I shall certainly support the amend- ment of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Elwyn-Jones.
5.6 p.m.
Lord Pitt of Hampstead: My Lords, like previous speakers, I have to apologise for my name not being down on the list of speakers. Unlike previous speakers, the reason in my case is that I had not realised a list was being made. I came here with a half-an-hour speech and your Lordships will have noticed that I have been busy cutting it down. I have instructions to make it two minutes. I cannot make it two minutes, but I will try to make it about five minutes. I had intended to divide the House and invite the House to reject this Bill on Third Reading, but I have been persuaded that it would be better to support the amendment in the name of my noble and learned friend Lord Elwyn-Jones, and I shall do so.
My Lords, the Bill is wrong in principle and it is discriminatory in practice. It will increase stateless- ness and insecurity. One of the features of Bill that has worried me is the cavalier attitude of the Govern- ment to the fact that it will increase statelessness. For the first time, people will be born in this country state- less. For the first time, children in British schools will be stateless. When a teacher has to take a class to the Continent, she will have to worry about the citizenship of the children in her class. This is one of the con- sequences of this Bill. Noble Lords who have been attending the debates during Committee and Report stage know that I have tried to see to what extent I could ameliorate it, without success.
The Bill also breaks an important Commonwealth link. I have discovered that the Commonwealth High Commissioners in London made representations to the Government, to the Foreign Office and to the Home Office, in this matter, but they seem to have had no effect. I have been a little saddened by that. One of the things they asked was that persons who qualified for British citizenship but who were born in a British dependency or former colony should not be subjected to unnecessary difficulties in establishing this newer British citizenship. This is what I was asking your Lordships to agree to, but your Lordships would not do so.
My Lords, all over the world, there are people, many of them now adults, like me, who grew up to regard themselves as British and who were proud to regard themselves as British. Most of them were taught British history at a time when they were not taught the history of their own country. Most of them know more of British geography than of the geography of their own country. Most of them know the flag of Britain and sing the National Anthem and Rule Britannia" with pride. Those are the people who are, in fact, discovering that Britain does not interpret their relationship in the way in which they interpret it. I go further and say that thousands of them came here and volunteered to fight for Britain and to defend Britain during the war. To none of
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them was that a peculiar action because they regarded themselves as intimately involved. Britain was at war and so they were also at war. They could see it no other way because, as your Lordships know, their economy was tied to this country and the laws under which they were ruled were inherited from Westminster. As I said earlier, they were taught not only to regard themselves as British but to be proud to be British.
I do not want to speak for too long because I said that I would cut my speech down--on the de-merits of the Bill. I merely wish to say to the noble Baroness, Lady Elles, that of course after the Bill you will no longer be in breach of the European Convention on Human Rights as regards citizenship, because what you have done is to take away the citizenship from the people whom you were told by the Commission you were discriminating against. Now they are no longer citizens of the United Kingdom and Colonies and since they no longer have United Kingdom. citizenship you cannot be condemned for not allowing them to come into the United Kingdom. That is how you have solved that particular problem. It is no use being proud of the fact that you have done that. I want to look at the Bill as it would affect people after it has been passed. What will happen in practice? I mentioned earlier about the children in school. Another noble Lord has mentioned people going to hospital. When the hospital clerk has to put down the nationality of a child and the child is black he will not automatically put "British". The child's parents will be cross-examined as to their immigration status. If they tell a lie there will be serious problems that could accrue to them for telling that lie. Alternatively, they may make a genuine mistake and, as many of your Lordships know, genuine mistakes in immigration matters have often been regarded as outright lies.
I should like to refer to the point which I raised on Second Reading. When the first British overseas citizen passport is presented for the first time to an immigration officer abroad how will that officer react? Will he treat the passport as worth anything whatever? Will he treat the holder as someone who enjoys the protection of the British Government or as someone to whom the Government explicitly and categorically refused last week in the debate on the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Geddes, to call a British national at all? I must confess to your Lordships that I re- garded the rejection of the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Geddes, last week as the most disgraceful act ever committed in this House. It was shameful. This Bill is a shameful measure. It can bring us only disrepute in the eyes of people at home and abroad. The only right which a British citizen has in this Bill is the right of abode in the United Kingdom. That right, of course, is denied to people who at present are as British in law, in personal history and in sentiments as those who are given that right of abode. However, there is an anomaly, because while those people are denied that right of abode, that right of abode is given. to many people who are citizens of other countries, who do not live here, who have never lived here and who have no intention of living here.
We could have had a simple Bill-a Bill which would have been vastly simpler and some would say more rational. It would not have been odd if we had merely given citizenship to the people who have it
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