Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Bill [HL]

The amendment would remove Hong Kong war wives and widows from the list of those who must satisfy a good character requirement to register as British. The registration route to British citizenship is designed for certain minors of a British parent born outside the UK, people already holding a lesser form of British nationality and others with family connections to the UK whose circumstances are treated as justifying a less rigorous path to citizenship than naturalisation. In the BNA 1981 the people in these groups are also classified according to whether their members were to be registered by entitlement solely on production of evidence that the prescribed criteria were satisfied or by discretion, with a good character requirement added to the test by Section 58 of the IAN Act 2006. It was only in 2006 that we began to insist on the good character test for any of these groups. Initially the Government applied the test to everybody who was granted citizenship by registration under the Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Bill of 2006 but we persuaded them to remove some groups from the list, such as the de facto stateless, British overseas citizens with no other citizenship and minors under the age of 10. However, we know from Monday’s debate that some of the first of these categories are still out in the cold. Unfortunately, the Government still left the Hong Kong war wives and widows in the list, although when the then Home Secretary, David Blunkett, introduced registration for this group he said: ""We are talking here about righting an historic wrong".—[Official Report, Commons, 5/11/02; col. 147.]" We considered the groups that were entitled to register as of right in an amendment to the 2007 Bill, and in her reply, the then Minister, the noble Baroness, Lady Ashton of Upholland, told us that, ""when we consider groups such as the wives and widows of those who fought in the defence of Hong Kong, we believe that we have brought them all into the system in one way or another".—[Official Report, 6/2/07; col. 621.]" They were women who had received a UK settlement letter from the Secretary of State confirming that, in recognition of their husband’s or late husband’s service in defence of Hong Kong during the Second World War, they could enter the United Kingdom for settlement at any time. In an Act sponsored by the noble Lord, Lord Willoughby de Broke, in 1996, these wives and widows had been given the right to register as British citizens. There was no requirement then, or for the next 10 years, that they would have to pass a character test. Today, the UKBA says that, at most, there are some 53 of them still alive. They were not brought into the system, nor was any explanation given by the Minister about why these very elderly ladies should be subjected to the indignity of the test. I hope noble Lords will agree to take them off the list.