Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what assessment she has made of changing the requirement for naturalisation applicants via the spousal route to have been in the UK for three years before the qualifying period, in the context of people's inability to travel during the covid-19 pandemic.

The Nationality and Borders Act 2022 introduced the power to allow the Secretary of State to waive the requirement for an applicant to be in the UK at the start of the residential qualifying period for naturalisation. Published guidance sets out when discretion would normally be exercised and covers absence due to the pandemic. Guidance also makes it clear that we would apply the same approach to extended period of absences from the UK due to covid restrictions.