BN (0) AND BOC STATUS
7.
BN(0) status will carry with it similar rights as British Overseas citizenship. Like, BOCS BN (0)s may travel on British passports describing them as BN (0)s; they will be entitled to British consular protection in
third countries;
they will be Commonwealth citizens: and they will have an entitlement to registration as British citizens like other British
nationals once they have lived here for 5 vears.
8.
British Overseas citizenship is a recognised nationality status.
Its holders are not therefore stateless. British Overseas citizens are
in exactly the same position now as they were before 1983, when they were British nationals who did not have the right of abode in the United Kigndom. The provisions in Schedule 2 to the BNA 1981 which make provisic for the acquisition of British Overseas citizenship in certain circumstanc were fully debated and approved by Parliament in 1981.
8. Thus to imply that BN (0) status, which has already been accepted by Parliament as appropriate to BDTCs in Hong Kong when the Hong Kong Act was being debated, amounts to a form of statelessness would call into question British Overseas citizenship which is a recognised form of
and nationality, established under the British Nationality Act 1981, approved by Parliament, and the acquisition of which is accepted as meeting our international obligations to reduce statelessness.
No comments yet.
Private notes are available after approval.