“The Project for the Registration of Children as British Citizens (PRCBC) is appalled at the Government’s legislative proposal to exclude some British children, born in the UK, from their statutory rights to be registered as British citizens under the British Nationality Act 1981.
Clause 30(4) and similar provisions concerning British nationality must be removed from this Bill.
The children to be treated in this manner are all children both born and grown up in the UK. The Government seeks to rob them of their citizenship rights for events before their born for which they can bear no responsibility, and of which they may even be entirely unaware.
The children whom the Government seeks to disenfranchise in this way will all be either the child of someone who has become a British citizen or permitted to stay permanently in the UK or a child who has lived continuously from birth for at least their first ten years of their life.
It is shocking to see legislation that so clearly pays no regard whatsoever to these children – neither their rights, their identity nor any real consideration of their wellbeing or safety. It is equally shocking that the Government has proposed something so wholly dismissive of any notion that British citizenship, as created by Parliament by the 1981 Act, should be a unifying status that fully and equally recognises the identity and connection of all British people.”
For information about British citizenship rights, see our booklet HERE
Solange Valdez-Symonds, PRCBC CEO/Solicitor, 10 March 2023.