Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Bill [HL]

I imagine that this will be another amendment that we can bundle up in the discussion. The first part will assist the small number of children born overseas to parents who were British citizens by descent, and were thus, as my noble friend has explained, unable to transmit their nationality to their children born overseas where those children were born in a qualifying territory in which the parents were not settled. "The qualifying territory" means the British Overseas Territories other than the sovereign base areas of Akrotiri and Dhekelia. The amendment would not affect the children born to BDTCs before 2002, because they derive their British citizenship from the British Overseas Territories Act 2002. Nor does it affect whether the child has the citizenship of the overseas territory. It is thus about the situation only of British citizens who live overseas, rather than those who are also British Overseas Territories citizens in their particular territory. If that sounds complicated, and if some of the things that my noble friend said sounded complicated, I agree. I had an e-mail this morning from a lady who said that she had three law degrees and, looking at what we said on Monday, could not make head or tail of it. She has asked me to suggest to the Government, and I do so most gladly, that they should produce a wall chart showing each path to citizenship contained in the law. That would make them a great deal easier to follow for members of the public and those who have to advise them, compared to trying to thread their way through the British Nationality Act 1981—particularly as the BNA 1981 does not include the amendments that we are considering in this Committee, although the Minister was kind enough to let us have the Keeling schedule showing how that Act will appear as amended by the Bill. I leave that with the Minister as a helpful suggestion from a member of the public who has been trying to follow our proceedings. The second part of the amendment would amend Section 1 of the British Nationality Act 1981 so that the children of British passport holders, other than British citizens born in the UK or a qualifying territory, are British citizens. British nationals other than British citizens have no right of abode by virtue of their British nationality alone. They are in a weaker position than third-country nationals settled in the UK or an overseas territory, and so are their children. The child of a person who is settled in the UK or an overseas territory is born a British citizen. It is a remarkable consequence of this Bill that, because probationary citizens will have limited, not indefinite, leave to remain, the children born to people on probationary citizenship will not be British citizens at birth and will have none of the rights and entitlements of citizenship. Thinking about that should help Members of the Committee to understand the position of British nationals other than British citizens, whose British passports give them no right of abode in any country. Taking a quick canter through the international treaties that are relevant to this issue, there is, first, the European Convention on Human Rights, which the UK has signed but not ratified, because of the application of Protocol 4 to British nationals who are not British citizens, including BN(O)s. Article 3 provides that: ""No one shall be expelled, by means either of an individual or of a collective measure, from the territory of the State of which he is a national … No one shall be deprived of the right to enter the territory of the state of which he is a national"." Then there is the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, which says that the child shall have the right to acquire a nationality. As we know, some children are born stateless and many are born without the right to enter the territory of the state to which they are supposed to belong. Thirdly, there is the European Convention on Nationality, with its provisions on the transmission of citizenship to children. The UK withdrew its reservation to this convention in 2008 and we invite the Minister to say—perhaps not now but in the course of the discussions that we are looking forward to—what changes in the law, particularly on the transmission of citizenship to children, enabled us to do this. Are British nationals other than British citizens our nationals or not? If they are, do the obligations that we have undertaken in international law have relevance? If they are not, what are they, and when and by whom is that determined? The noble and learned Lord, Lord Goldsmith, said in his review, Citizenship: Our Common Bond, which I have already mentioned: ""If citizenship should be seen as the package of rights and responsibilities which demonstrate the tie between a person and a country, the present scheme falls short of that ideal"." I hope that in the course of discussions with the noble Lord, we will approach a little more closely to the ideal. I beg to move.