Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Bill [HL]

Amendments 87 to 89 are linked to Amendment 86, which has been tabled by my noble friends Lord Avebury and Lady Falkner of Margravine. We move now to consider Clause 40 which relates to children born in the United Kingdom to members of the Armed Forces. Its provisions follow the publication of the Ministry of Defence Command Paper of July 2008, The Nation’s Commitment: Cross-Government Support to our Armed Forces, their Families and Veterans. In Clause 40, the Government make provision for those born within the United Kingdom or a qualifying territory, at least one of whose parents is serving in the British Armed Forces, to be born as British citizens. So the clause benefits those who are born after a day to be appointed. It also makes provision for children born in the United Kingdom but not in a qualifying territory after the appointed day, whose parents enter the British armed services while a child is under 18, to register as British citizens subject to the good character test set out in Clause 43. Those eligible to serve in the British Armed Forces are British citizens, British nationals other than British citizens, Commonwealth citizens and Irish citizens. It seems very complicated that children should be distinguished according to whether they are born in the United Kingdom or in a qualifying territory, and according to the particular status in the Armed Forces of their parents. If the Government are seeking to be generous in their treatment of the armed services, it would be quite simple to draft a clause which said to parents, "You are eligible to become members of the Armed Forces because of the close ties that you have with the United Kingdom. Your service in the Armed Forces has strengthened those ties and because of that your children will either be born British citizens or be eligible to register as British citizens". That would be a simple way of looking at it rather than the way that the clause has been drafted. Amendment 86 would ensure that all those born to serving members of the Armed Forces in the United Kingdom or in a qualifying territory, whether before or after the commencement of the Act, are entitled to be registered as British citizens. The Act specifically reserves entitlement to those born after its commencement. The clause, as drafted, can create a situation where a child born after the provision comes into force may be a British citizen but a child born before the Act comes into force to the same parents is not. The younger brother becomes a British citizen; the older brother does not. Distinguishing between children born before the Act comes into force and those born after is not, in my respectful submission, a sensible provision. The first group of children to benefit from the amendment will be those born between now and the appointed day. In case anybody thinks this is an academic point, one has only to look at the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002 in which the Government amended the British Nationality Act 1991 so that children born after the appointed day to British fathers not married to their mothers could, on proof of paternity, acquire their father’s British nationality. The appointed day did not arrive for four years so all those children born before the day that the Act came into force when the Bill was passed did not have the benefit of those provisions. A four-year delay took place. You can imagine that in the future children who were born in the interim period will be campaigning because they were born on the wrong side of the blanket, if I may use that expression, and I hope your Lordships are following me. If you are in the forces, what do you do? Do you refrain from having children until the Home Office decides that it is time for this Act to be passed? The second group of people to benefit from Amendment 86 will be those already born in the United Kingdom or a qualifying territory to a mother or father who was a serving member of the Armed Forces at the time of their birth. The provision comes into force, as I have already commented, on or after the appointed day. I am referring to children who were born before the Bill was passed. To be serving members of the Armed Forces, their parents will have had to have been eligible in the sense that I have described and have built on that connection through their service. Why should their children not also benefit? Amendment 86 removes the starting point, the appointed day, whenever that should be—when the Home Secretary, the Secretary of State or whoever decides that these provisions should come into force. The purpose of the second amendment is to ensure that the application for registration need not be made while the person is still a child. The third amendment would ensure that the parents must have been in the Army while the UK-born child was under 18, if a person is to register under this clause. The purpose of these amendments is to ensure that UK-born children whose parents served in the British Army while the child was still a child may register even when they have ceased to be children themselves, when they are adults at the time of the application. By removing the words, "while still a minor", the amendment would continue to require that the parents were serving during the child’s minority but would not require that the person be a child at the time of application for registration. The amendment is crafted so that the children of these people have to register, and under Clause 43 registration will be subject to the good character test, so this does not mean that they will immediately be British citizens, merely that they will be entitled to apply for registration, subject to that test. We think that this makes some sense of the way in which the Government have drafted these provisions. I am sure there is a great deal of good will behind the Government’s purpose, and I hope that that extends at least to considering in some detail the submissions that I have made to the Committee now. I beg to move.