Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Bill [HL]

Our principal aim is to reform the path to citizenship by creating three clear routes to achieving it, and to ensure that it is earned. The three routes are clear: work, family and the protection route. We require migrants to pass through successive stages on their journey to citizenship, and at each stage they will need to demonstrate that they have earned the right to progress. That supports the key principle that rights are matched by responsibilities. With regard to the noble Lord’s first amendment, I cannot support the notion of an average calculation of absences over the qualifying period, but I can advise that we will not examine that requirement too closely where the absences are in the earlier part of the probationary period. However, as I have said, we require British citizens to demonstrate clearly that they have a close connection and a continuing relationship with the UK and intend to regard the UK as their home. We believe that that can be demonstrated by migrants spending the overwhelming majority of their time in the UK during their qualifying period. We consider that that encourages integration more than an individual spending a large part of their time abroad. If we applied an average of absences over a six-year period, that could in theory allow someone to be absent for up to 540 days in one go, yet still qualify for naturalisation. We do not consider that this is the best way for a migrant to demonstrate a close connection. Under our proposals, migrants will be able to spend one-quarter of each year of their qualifying period outside the UK and still qualify for British citizenship. We feel that that is a more than adequate provision. As I said, we will not examine the requirement too closely where the absences take place in the early part of the qualifying period—that is, in the entry into the probationary citizenship stage, which has already been examined. We are not concerned about absences from the UK before the start of the qualifying period. We want—I think this meets the point made by several noble Lords—to avoid a system that penalises those who we want to stay here from being able to because they have exceeded the set limit by a few days, or who may have justifiable reasons to explain their absence. The Bill therefore provides a discretion to allow the Secretary of State to overlook periods of absence that exceed 90 days in a year in the special circumstances of a particular case. Cases cited in the discussion of this clause would provide some of the basis for that kind of discretion. We will continue to expect migrants to justify large absences. In such cases we would expect the applicant to demonstrate close links with the UK in terms of length of residence and the presence of home, family and estate in the UK. We would also look at the reasons for absences.