Deprivation of Citizenship Orders (Effect during Appeal) Bill

Judith Cummins Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 30th June 2025 Commons Chamber

[Dan Jarvis]

I am always grateful to the right hon. Gentleman. It is. Perhaps he did not hear me make that point earlier, but I specifically said that one of the reasons for the Bill was to prevent someone who is outside the UK, and who poses a risk to our national security, from returning when a further appeal may be upheld by the Home Secretary’s decision. He is right: that is a potential scenario that we have to guard against, and the Bill will enable us to do that, just as Governments could prior to the ruling of the Supreme Court. I hope he finds that reassuring.

As I set out, deprivation is one of the most powerful tools we have in our ongoing efforts to protect the United Kingdom and its citizens from harm. For it to remain an effective part of our armoury, we need to legislate. Before I finish, I pay tribute to our world-class law enforcement and intelligence agencies. In turbulent and uncertain times, their tireless work to maintain stability and security at home has never been more crucial. They must be supported at every turn, because the safety of our country stands apart from everything else we do. It is the cornerstone of our society, and ensuring that safety is the primary purpose of everyone involved in public service, including in this House. It is a responsibility borne not just by those of us on the Government Benches, but by parliamentarians of all parties. In that spirit, I urge Members to support the Bill, which is required to preserve our national security. I commend it wholeheartedly to the House.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)]

I call the shadow Minister.

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[Josh Simons (Makerfield) (Lab)]

On this island, citizenship is an idea still in its infancy. When Great Britain was forged in the Acts of Union in 1707, British people were not citizens, but subjects, equals by virtue of their relationship to the monarch. Only with the British Nationality Act 1948 was the concept of citizenship introduced into our laws. I say that because, to my mind, we live in an age when political imagination is needed more than ever. The recent experiment with politics as bureaucratic management is over, and we are now returning to a politics with a longer history in this country, forging the future through imagination and creativity, and exercising the collective power to change the values and systems by which we are ruled.

At a moment like this, the relative infancy of citizenship in Britain should encourage us to pause to examine an idea we too often glide over; and I hope that you, Madam Deputy Speaker, will forgive me for doing just that. Citizenship, like the motivation behind this Bill, is connected to one of the great challenges of our time: controlling our borders and establishing systems of legal migration and asylum that are orderly, managed, humane and in our national interest.

Let me start with what my constituents in Makerfield tell me. They want to feel that they and their family belong in the community they live in, and they want their neighbours to feel that they belong there, too. That is why high streets full of vape shops, dog muck and smashed glass matter so much—they are a visible and constant reminder that others seem not to feel that they belong. When people treat their community with respect and love, they show that they feel that they belong.

Citizenship is belonging on a bigger scale—a larger us. It is the unchosen love we feel for our family, and even our town, projected on to the story of a country and its people—the monarch; the flag; the mountains, hills and seas; the industrial skyline of my home towns in northern England, and the cobbled streets of Cornwall. Citizenship is a feeling, and, like any feeling, it carries responsibilities. It is about not only what we are owed, but what we owe—responsibility, contribution, duty.

We live in uncertain times, with Europe at war, the middle east in crisis and the world order being remade at breakneck speed. In such times, I believe we should celebrate and nurture citizenship far more than we do. Now, we hide it away. We bury citizenship ceremonies in dingy, bureaucratic corners of town halls, making the test for those who obtain it their capacity to pay thousands of pounds for the privilege, not their commitment to our country and our values. For me, that is what citizenship should be about. I believe that citizens of this country should speak our language, know our history and share our commitment to fairness, tolerance, creativity and freedom. Those who wish to become citizens must, in the end, be willing to stand shoulder to shoulder with their fellow citizens to defend that freedom in a world where it really is threatened.

That brings me to the Bill. While I voted to remain, I did so after much thought. It was always true that the European Union changes the capacity of elected representatives to control borders, and places clear constitutional constraints on what Parliament can do. However, I am always suspicious of those who blame forces beyond Parliament for their failure to use its immense powers. My constituents understand a simple truth about this country’s constitution, which is that our politicians can enact almost any law they please, and Governments with strong majorities can do almost whatever they want. If they choose not to use those powers, rarely is it because of some external force, whether that be Strasbourg or an arm’s length body. Instead, it is because they are frightened to use their own power, or lack the imagination to use it well.

That is why I strongly support the measures in the Bill. It is not about making people stateless or subverting judges. Instead, it is about doing what this place is supposed to do, which is to assert the view of Parliament on what citizenship means and how it should be enacted. Valuing citizenship requires being clear about when and under what circumstances it should be taken away. Being an equal, full part of our society means sharing our values. British citizenship affirms a person’s part in our country, and there must be a way to remove those who threaten it, where they have dual citizenship.

If the Home Secretary has decided in narrow and prescribed circumstances that it is in the public interest to remove a person’s citizenship because they threaten our security, in my view, that is what should happen. Of course, we must have an appeals process—no one must ever be above the law in this land. However, an appeal should not mean that the will of elected officials is thwarted. This is part of a broader agenda of this Government that I strongly support: changing the process of judicial review to ensure that the few cannot hold up investment and infrastructure that benefits the many, and reforming the European convention on human rights to update human rights for the 21st century, strengthen national security and enhance control over our borders.

The British people are fed up with politicians passing the buck and blaming someone else for their own failure to act. If we do not create a modern citizenship regime, reform the ECHR and judicial review, establish digital ID or, for that matter, radically reform the British state, it is nobody’s fault but our own—us, the British political class. I, for one, am sick of politicians throwing up their hands and blaming others for their own failures. I will always support a Government who take responsibility for using Parliament to deliver the radical change that this country needs, and that is why I support this Bill tonight.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)]

I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.

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[Kit Malthouse]

I understand the hon. Member’s point, but I am afraid that I am not interested in comparisons with the United States. I would hold us to a higher bar. We are a more ancient country that should have, as he rightly pointed out, a better developed sense of how we build a cohesive society.

I would challenge whether the United States can be held up as a paragon of virtue on societal cohesion or whether actually it is a divided country, with part of that division coming from a sense that there are first, second and maybe even third-class citizens there. At the moment, it is going through a period of challenge as to what it means to be a United States citizen. We have seen litigation under—it has slipped from my mind. It starts, “We the people”. [Hon. Members: “The constitution.”] That is the word—forgive me; a senior moment. The United States is seeing legal challenge under its constitution on precisely those grounds of what it means to be a citizen.

I do not want to detain the House for much longer, but we need to think carefully about the impact that this regime has beyond the people whom it targets. We may say of cases like Shamima Begum that what she did was completely appalling and she deserves to be punished. Obviously, the decision was taken to revoke her citizenship. I am not sure whether that was the right thing to do. I do think she needs to be punished. In many ways, I would rather she had been brought to this country, and punished and jailed here. She is nobody else’s problem but ours. As I say, by promoting this regime I think we undermine the value of what it means to be a British citizen because, once acquired, citizenship should be a right. Civis Romanus sum. It should mean something. It is not the keys to the executive lavatory, to be removed when you lose the privilege and rights of your position; it is something that you acquire that is fundamentally in you once you are in the club, and we should be wary of the wider impact if we decide to remove it.

I have one final suggestion for the Minister. I realise that I am in a minority, and the House is not going to comply; he is going to get his legislation. However, I ask him to think carefully about the value of the judiciary in this process. Would it be possible to amend the process such that, when an appeal is won by an individual and the Government wish to continue to deprive that person of citizenship, the permission of the judge should be sought for that, pending a further appeal? The Government will have to seek permission to appeal in all circumstances; I ask the Minister to consider whether they should have to seek also permission to maintain the condition of a deprivation of citizenship, as part of that permission to appeal.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)]

I call the shadow Minister.