Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what assessment her Department has made of the potential merits of automatically granting citizenship to the parents of children under 18 who are British nationals, in the context of article 9 of the UN convention on the rights of the child.

The current nationality law, the British Nationality Act 1981, defines who is a British citizen. British nationality can be acquired through birth, descent, registration, and naturalisation (subject to fulfilling relevant statutory requirements). There is no power in law to grant British citizenship outside of the statutory provisions of the BNA 1981.

The Act reflects the principle that citizenship should be acquired on the basis of a close and continuing connection with the UK. Parents of British children can apply to naturalise if they wish to and meet the requirements which are designed to test the strength of the applicant’s connections with this country.

There are no plans to amend the law in this respect.