In early September 2024, PRCBC assisted our patron, Baroness Lister of Burtersett, in tabling several parliamentary questions concerning children’s rights to British citizenship. The Minister, Lord Hanson of Flint, answered these in two groups on 16 and 17 September respectively.
Baroness Lister tabled three questions as to what steps the Government is taking to ensure children’s rights to British citizenship are known, accessible and exercised (HL655, HL656 & HL657), which together largely (though not exclusively) related to children in care. In response, the Minister confirmed that the Home Office regularly engages with local authorities for the purpose of ensuring those authorities can make applications for children in their care to be registered as British citizens, where that is appropriate. Importantly, he confirmed “the Home Office will assist any applicant by checking information held from its records to confirm a claim” where there are evidence gaps in the information available to a local authority. While this commitment is given in the context of children in care, there appears no good reason why it should not extend to other children where, for example, a hostile father will not provide confirmation of his status or assist in establishing paternity that is relevant to the child’s citizenship rights. Less encouragingly, the Minister indicated no improved commitment to raising awareness of the citizenship rights of children not in care, merely listing the limited information that the Home Office already makes publicly available via GOV.UK, “published customer guidance” and the “nationality status confirmation service.”
Baroness Lister also tabled three wider questions concerning rights to British citizenship and the steps taken by Government to ensure these rights are exercised by children, to ensure these rights are clearly differentiated from the Home Secretary’s discretion to naturalise an adult migrant, and to assess the race equality impact of policy and practice relating to these rights (HL717, HL718 & HL720). The Minister stated that equality impact assessments are undertaken “whenever decisions are taken on policy relating to registering statutory rights to British citizenship”, and indicated this was last done on changes to Home Office policy concerning section 3(1) of the British Nationality Act 1981 and on the introduction of the Nationality and Borders Act 2022. However, his response was more generally limited to asserting that the Home Office published guidance is “clear and easy to follow” and its caseworkers are trained to ensure correct application of nationality law.