My Lords, I rise briefly to speak in support of at least one of the points made by the noble Baroness, Lady Lister of Burtersett. It is a point I have made before.
Nobody is entitled under any form of international law to succeed in an application for naturalisation as a British subject. In fact, we as a country are not obliged to grant naturalisation, but Parliament chooses that we should do so. In doing so, it understandably sets conditions; these conditions might relate to good character, how long one has lived here and things like that. Of course, part of those conditions will include the setting of the fee that needs to be paid. There are other immigration processes that people who are not British subjects may wish to apply for, which again may rightly and properly involve a fee. Nobody disputes that; the noble Baroness does not dispute that as a matter of principle at all. There are practical considerations, some of which the noble Baroness has explored in quite considerable detail in her remarks, about what the effects of those fees might be, and the noble Baroness, Lady D’Souza, raised the question of the effects, particularly in relation to people coming here with scientific qualifications and in the scope of education. All of those are matters which are very properly the subject of public policy.
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I tend to think that it is true that the Home Office is playing sleight of hand here to some extent, raising the fees higher than they need to be raised, or at least higher than can be justified by the work involved, as a means of trying to extract money from people who need to go through those processes, but it is ultimately a matter of policy. However, there is a bigger sleight of hand going on, which is the point that concerns me. It is the obfuscation we constantly see from the Home Office about the distinction between applications for naturalisation or other immigration processes, to which I have been referring so far, and applications for registration as a British national.
The application for registration is not an application made by a foreign person for the right to be naturalised as British; the application for registration is an application by somebody who is already British to be recognised as such by the Government and the state. That status of being qualified for registration arose—I think it was legislated for at the end of the Second World War—because of the messiness and complexity of nationality and different national statuses that were left behind as empire began to dissolve. It was recognised by government and Parliament that you could not possibly make a list of all the different categories that might arise—you would miss people—and so there would be this safeguard for people who were entitled to be recognised as, at the time, British subjects, who would apply and demonstrate it on the evidence. That does not seem to me the same thing at all; that seems to me the recognition of a right that already exists.
We who do not have to demonstrate that right, or who can demonstrate it routinely, are perfectly willing to accept that some fee might be involved in that. We all pay a fee when we apply for a passport. We begrudge paying fees, but we do not think it is a wicked thing to do, so some fee might well be involved in registration. However, a fee that is so high that it prevents people exercising what are in fact their natural rights—rights that have recognised by Parliament—seems wholly odious. The constant obfuscation of the Home Office
in trying to merge these two and pretend that they are really the same is almost bordering on insulting to a Parliament that created that distinction in the first place.
I see some modestly approving nods on the Labour Front Bench. However, it is the case that, in the past, I have noticed that although the Labour Party might have some sympathy for this argument, it never actually swings in behind it with the undoubted weight that it can bring if things were forced to the Lobbies. I think that is a pity, because I believe that this category was introduced in the immediate post-war era by none other than the Attlee Government. It is a Labour invention, so I would have thought that the Labour Party would be willing on some occasion, if not today, to put itself on the front line on that. We will find out.
In the meantime, I urge my noble friend on the Front Bench to be honest and clear about these two wholly different categories, and recognise that, even though fees are appropriate for both, they are absolutely distinct and the Home Office should stop trying to muddle us about them.