Nationality and Borders Bill

Imran Hussain Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 7th December 2021 Commons Chamber

[Bambos Charalambous]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. How can someone know when the 28 days are going to run if they have not received notice of the decision to strip them of their citizenship? It is basic.

[Imran Hussain (Bradford East) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that at the heart of this matter is the complete stripping away of due process? A person does not have to be given notice, or a reason why they are being stripped of their nationality. This has a disproportionate impact on our black, Asian and minority ethnic communities.

--- Later in debate ---

[Paul Bristow]

I rise to speak to amendment 12 to clause 9. Peterborough is a city of an estimated 20,000 Muslims and a city full of people who can trace their ancestry to scores of different countries around the world. Many are dual nationals. They are my friends, my colleagues and my supporters. I speak as the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on British Muslims—something I do with pride.

Last week, I held a surgery at the Khadijah mosque and met my local branch of the Conservative Muslim Forum. A common experience within British Muslim households and families are stories from first-generation migrants—grandparents and great-grandparents—telling younger family members that there may come a time when they will be asked to leave. Despite our shared values, this insecurity is understandable and genuinely felt. The UK was a very different country in the 1970s, when racism and far-right marches were common and Idi Amin had just thrown the Asians out of Uganda. Even today, Islamophobia and racism are all too common.

Some 93% of Muslims say they feel strongly that they belong to Britain. That not only applies to Muslims; it applies to other communities, too. There is nothing—nothing—in this Bill that should make families more insecure, and those who push this perception on social media and in this House spread fear and anxiety. They should understand the consequences of their actions.

For over a century, Home Secretaries have had the ability to remove British citizenship in exceptional circumstances, provided it does not leave a person stateless. There must be a significant risk of harm to the public, such as terrorism, and there is a right to appeal. This Bill makes no changes to these existing powers. There is a legitimate debate to be had about whether it is right for the Home Secretary to have this power and whether she should be able to strip, albeit in limited circumstances, dual nationals of their citizenship. That argument was raised by my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis).

But that is not what this Bill is about. Clause 9 alters the requirement for the Home Secretary to serve notice on a person in cases where this would be impracticable, such as if they are in hiding or in the middle of a warzone. To present this as a threat to people living in my city is scaremongering, which is shameful. Nobody in Peterborough is affected by this minor change to the law, and no constituent should feel concerned about their citizenship.

Let me tell the House what Labour activists and Labour councillors are saying in my constituency. Councillor Amjad Iqbal, a legal practitioner—not a lawyer—messaged constituents saying:

“As your councillor I am very concerned at some of the policies this government is sharing behind closed doors. As ethnic minority individuals I wish to share this with you and please sign and send to Paul Bristow the MP whose Government is responsible for this fiasco.”

Behind closed doors? We are debating it in the House of Commons.

Another councillor, Councillor Qayyum, said ward residents

“have been told that their Nationality cannot be revoked by an MP who has written to them on official letterhead paper. This is untrue.”

I cannot revoke anyone’s citizenship. To send out that message to people in my constituency is shameful. This misinformation has consequences for some of the most vulnerable people in my city.

One of the kindest, most loving families in my constituency—a family I helped with a schooling issue—came to me after being told by an activist that I want to see them deported and deprived of their citizenship. This is despicable. I know why Members opposite and the Labour party do this—it is because they have nothing left to say.

[Imran Hussain]

I also rise to speak in support of amendment 12.

Citizenship is a fundamental right that speaks to our very sense of belonging and identity, which is why it is enshrined not just in law but in the UN charter, the universal declaration of human rights and the 1954 convention relating to the status of stateless persons.

Under this Home Secretary, the Government have failed to treat citizenship with the reverence and respect it deserves. By removing the requirement to give notice, she has done away with due process and has expanded her already draconian powers that allow her to deprive anyone of British citizenship, provided she believes it is in the interest of the public good.

Reference has been made to powers that, according to the analysis of the Office for National Statistics, could affect 6 million people, many from a Pakistani, Indian, Bangladeshi, Jamaican or Nigerian background. Let me be absolutely clear: that is the group of people the Bill will disproportionately impact, which is why this House must vote the clause down today.

Over the past fortnight since I originally raised this issue, I have had people telling me, much like some of the arguments we have heard from the Government Benches, “As long as you don’t break the law, you have nothing to fear from the Home Office.” I absolutely disagree: working-class people from a black, from an Asian or from any ethnic minority background have everything to fear from this Home Office. Let us not forget that it is this Tory Home Office that presided over the mass deportations in the Windrush scandal; that it is this Home Office that continues to prosecute a hostile environment against migrants, refugees and asylum seekers; and that it is this Home Office that uses Orwell’s “Nineteen Eighty-Four” not as a warning, but as a guidebook. I therefore have no confidence, and neither do my constituents, that, based on its record, the Home Office will not further expand the scope of its powers to deprive someone of British citizenship on more spurious grounds.

The powers that the Home Secretary has even now to deprive someone of British citizenship already create two tiers in society based on foreign ancestry, but removing the requirement to provide notice takes things even further. An individual stripped of citizenship will not be told or given reasons and will therefore have no real right of appeal—and all this can happen even as they are being deported. Frankly, such a move should send shivers down the spine of anyone interested in upholding liberty and due process. I simply ask those who want to accuse me of sensationalising the situation to come walk for a day, for a year, for a lifetime in the shoes of someone the Home Office has decreed to be a second-class citizen, and then tell me that they honestly believe that these are not the real fears of those from ethnic minority backgrounds in our own country today.

[Sally-Ann Hart (Hastings and Rye) (Con)]

I wish to focus on clause 9 but will refer to amendment 12.

Clause 9 amends the deprivation of citizenship powers in the British Nationality Act 1981. Currently, as Members have highlighted, section 40(5) of that Act requires the Secretary of State to give a person written notice of a deprivation order, the reasons for it and the person’s right of appeal. The power to deprive an individual of their citizenship has been available for more than a century, since the British Nationality and Status of Aliens Act 1914, and is currently also contained in the 1981 Act. Home Office powers to strip British nationals of their citizenship were introduced after the 2005 London bombings and broadened in 2014.

As we have heard, there has been some criticism of the clause in the House and outside the House. For example, the Runnymede Trust states that citizenship is not a privilege and that the Bill is

“a threat to ethnic minority Britons”.

I wholly disagree. Citizenship of any country is a privilege, not a right. We are all privileged to be British citizens. It is a privilege that comes with responsibility.

The deprivation of citizenship on conducive grounds is rightly reserved for those who pose a threat to the UK or whose conduct involves very high harm. It is integral to the national security of this country that if an affected person cannot be contacted, or if knowledge of their whereabouts derives from sensitive intelligence sources, we can act in the best interests of this country and our citizens.

Removing someone’s British citizenship is a last resort against the most dangerous people who pose a risk to society, or those whose conduct involves very high levels of harm. It is rare and always come with a right to appeal. Deprivation of citizenship on fraud grounds is for those who obtained their citizenship fraudulently and so were never entitled to it in the first place.

The Bill does not change any existing rights, or the circumstances in which a person can be deprived of their citizenship. Decisions are made following the careful consideration of advice from officials and lawyers, and always in accordance with international law. Each case is assessed individually. With regard to seeking to deprive an individual of their British citizenship on the basis that that is conducive to the public good, the law requires that this action should proceed only if the individual will not be left stateless.