Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Bill [HL]

We appreciate that these arrangements are necessary so that people who enter the UK from the common travel area and persons with a Commonwealth right of abode can access the new citizenship process or have permanent leave to remain. Amendments 50 and 53 concern an Irish national who enters the UK but would cease to have a right to reside here under the EEA regulations 2006 if she were no longer a qualifying person; for example, if she entered as a worker, became pregnant and stopped working on medical advice. Will the Minister explain how an Irish citizen, apart from ceasing to be a qualifying person under paragraph 6(1) of the EEA regulations, could otherwise forfeit the right to reside in the UK? As he explained, the amendments give any such person a qualifying CTA entitlement, which is defined in Amendments 107 and 108. Then we have a person with a Commonwealth right of abode, which is also to count as a qualifying immigration status for naturalisation as a British citizen under Section 6(2) of the British Nationality Act 1981 if he has a right of abode under Section 2(1)(b) of that Act. However, when I looked that up, I discovered that it referred to a Commonwealth citizen who had a right of abode in the UK immediately before the commencement of the 1981 Act by virtue of Sections 2(1)(d) and 2(2) of the Act as then in force. However, those sections have been repealed and it is, therefore, no longer possible to tell who is entitled just from reading the Act or even by going to the otherwise wonderful website www.statutelaw.gov.uk. The definition therefore fails the test of being prescribed by law and I suggest to the Minister that, at Report, if he agrees, he should repeal Section 2(1)(b) and re-enact in this Bill whatever was in Sections 2(1)(d) and 2(2). I should be grateful if he could think about that and perhaps not give me an answer off the cuff, but discuss it with me before Report. Amendments 57, 60 and 64 to 76 broaden the range of persons who can benefit from the shorter route to naturalisation on the basis of a family relationship. The amendments accept part of the proposal in our Amendment 61 in this group that a person with a Commonwealth right of abode and a relevant family association should be able to be naturalised without the former having to be based on the latter, but not that the same principle applies to the permanent EEA entitlement, which was also covered in our Amendment 61. Can the Minister explain this distinction? We protest that this is an example of the complexity of the scheme, which seems to be required by the splitting of the shorter family route to naturalisation into two groups—those with a permanent EEA entitlement whose leave must depend on the relationship throughout the whole of the path to citizenship and those where this is not required through a Commonwealth right of abode or the new CTA entitlement. If I may say so, this is the very opposite of the Home Secretary’s claim in her foreword to The Path to Citizenship Green Paper, in which she says: ""We want to make the journey to citizenship clearer, simpler and easier for the public and migrants to understand"." I defy even Gail Trimble to find her way through the constantly changing maze of rights, entitlements and exceptions in the Bill. We have to express concern about the proliferation of types of probationary citizenship leave and to ask the Government why they made the system so complicated, instead of requiring everyone on the path to permanent citizenship or permanent leave to remain to spend the whole of the qualifying period in their existing temporary leave status. I know that we will not get anywhere with that, but I have to keep drumming it in, because it is a simple point that needs to be understood by the Government if they want to know where we are coming from in our criticisms of the whole Bill. Finally, we have a question about Amendment 60. I thank the Minister for most kindly providing the Keeling schedule, although it incorporates only the amendments to Schedule 1 to the BNA made by the Bill in its original form and does not include the amendments that we are considering. The qualifying CTA entitlement requires the holder to have arrived in the UK on a local journey, as the Minister explained, which is defined in Section 11 of the Immigration Act 1971 as a journey that begins and ends in the common travel area consisting of the UK, the Republic of Ireland, the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man. For instance, an Irish citizen who comes here on a flight from Dublin acquires a qualifying CTA entitlement, but if he then goes to Paris for a weekend by Eurostar or Ryanair, his return is not a local journey within the meaning of Section 11. Amendments 107 and 108 say unambiguously that he must have, ""last arrived … on a local journey"." So, by going to Paris for the weekend, this person has forfeited his qualifying CTA entitlement, which has to begin again from the time of his arrival back at Waterloo. Was that really the intention behind these amendments?