27 January 2022
The Bishop of Chelmsford, the Rt Revd Dr Guli Francis-Dehqani has raised concerns in the House of Lords about the Government’s Nationality and Borders Bill which would provide new powers to strip people of their citizenship.
My Lords,
I am grateful to those noble Lords who have already spoken. It is heartening to hear voices from across the House raise concerns with the proposed powers contained within Clause 9.
I can well imagine variants on our current conversation happening time and time again ever since the British Nationality Act 1981 brought in deprivation of citizenship, and indeed a look through Hansard confirms this. Since 1981, these deprivation powers have been amended and extended in 2003, 2006, 2014 and 2018. Each time the rationale provided by government is the same. That these are relatively minor tweaks, made for good pragmatic reasons, with the security of the nation in mind. And that these powers will be used only in extreme circumstances, with great caution and restraint on the part of government.
And yet it seems that these powers are never quite enough, and, the argument that they would only be used in the most extreme cases, seems somewhat at odds with the 104 cases in 2017 alone.
At some point it must surely become necessary for us to say that the Secretary of State has more than sufficient powers given the gravity of what it means to be stripping citizenship away from people. Instead it seems we are being asked to allow for the goal posts to be moved again – for the third time in less than a decade.
I will listen with care to the noble minister’s response, but the accompanying fact sheets of this bill and the answers from ministers to date do not seem to provide the necessary substantial evidence that there is a widespread problem that needs fixing. Nor do they yet provide the reassurance that such new powers are proportionate or necessary, given the significant concern that they cause among many - minority groups in particular. I hope that the noble minister can reassure us with some clear evidence of the number of cases that we are talking about, and why the current powers are inadequate.
+Guli Chelmsford
