The price of British citizenship
Anita Hurrell
Tuesday, April 27, 2021
There is increasing scrutiny of the high cost of a child registering their right to British nationality, writes Anita Hurrell, head of the Migrant Children’s Project at Coram Children’s Legal Centre
Which children born in the UK are British? The law is complex and many families are confused about whether or not they can apply for a British passport for their child. Up to 1983 the UK had birthright citizenship, whereby all babies born in the UK were automatically British. Since 2006, where a child is born in the UK to at least one British or settled parent, the child is automatically British. “Settled” means that the parent has no time restriction on their stay in the UK. For European families, this often means the parent needs to show that they had acquired permanent residence – for instance by working for five years – by the time their child was born in the UK. Others will need to show that they held indefinite leave to remain at the time of the birth.
For those children who are not automatically British and who cannot just apply for a passport, there may be a route to apply through a process known as registration. The two main routes are:
- If the child was born in the UK, they can register once they reach the age of 10 if they have not had long absences outside the UK; and
- If they were born in the UK, they can register if one of their parents acquires permanent status or British citizenship subsequent to their birth while they are still under 18.
Would-be citizens
It is difficult to estimate the number of children with such an entitlement, but what is clear is that the registration applications received by the Home Office each year – fewer than 45,000 in 2020 – are likely to represent only a fraction of those who in law would be entitled to apply.
In 2019, there were approximately 6.2 million non-British citizens living in the UK, with Polish being the most common nationality. Assuming a similar age structure to the general population, with around 21 per cent being under 18, there may be 1.3 million non-British citizen children living in the UK and many of these children are likely to be eligible to register as British.
Within the EU settlement scheme, which is designed to support millions of EU citizens to gain permission to continue living in the UK, too little is being done to help families and local authorities to work out which children are automatically British and which are entitled to register as British. Home Office statistics show that in 2020 only 9,589 EEA-national children were registered as British. In their June 2020 report, the Roma Support Group, for example, highlighted that many Roma children are entitled to British citizenship but are not applying for it due to a lack of information and the financial means to pay the fee.
It is the £1,012 application fee that is widely recognised as the most significant barrier to children realising their rights to British citizenship. In April 2018, the House of Lords select committee on citizenship and civic engagement published a report in which they stated that there is a case for waiving the fee altogether for children in care and those who have spent their entire lives in the UK. In July 2019, the Joint Committee on Human Rights published a report which recommended that Home Office fees for children who have a right to be British should be proportionate and should be priced at a rate that is accessible for children accessing their rights. Most recently, in December 2020, a year-long independent, cross-party inquiry into citizenship policy chaired by Alberto Costa MP published its final report with a recommendation that citizenship by registration be made free.
Unlawful price tag?
The price tag on children’s citizenship has also been litigated in the courts. In February 2021, the Court of Appeal ruled that in fixing the fee, the Home Office failed to comply with the duty to consider children’s best interests as a primary consideration. The Home Office has not appealed against this decision and it should now do a full assessment of children’s best interests in respect of the fee. The Court of Appeal also ruled that the £1,012 fee does not go beyond the power to fix fees conferred by the Immigration Act 2014, following an earlier ruling from the same court in 2017. The claimants have been granted permission to appeal on this point and whether the law allows the £1,012 fee will now be considered by the Supreme Court.
In the meantime, it is important to explore every child’s nationality rights as a priority and to pay the fee so a child can apply. Gaining British citizenship is about much more than a passport. Legally, belonging to a country and gaining equal rights fundamentally affects an individual’s life throughout and beyond childhood.
It brings stability: once a citizen, a child is free to come into, live in and leave the UK and citizenship can only in very rare cases be revoked – in contrast to indefinite leave to remain. Citizens enjoy the protection of the state, including protection from British embassies abroad.
Being a citizen also has implications for the transmission of nationality to future generations. Gaining citizenship opens up educational and sport opportunities, scholarships and trips as well as career paths including joining the armed forces, civil service or police. Citizenship is important for young people’s political participation: unless they are citizens, they generally cannot vote. Citizenship goes to the core of identity and children should not be priced out of it.www.childrenslegalcentre.com
POINTS FOR PRACTICE
- For information on which children are automatically British, see: www.gov.uk/check-british-citizenship
- If a child is British, they can apply for a passport. See: www.gov.uk/get-a-child-passport. It costs £49 to apply online and £58.50 to apply with a paper form from the Post Office. A child passport is valid for five years.
- For an overview of which children can apply to register as British. See: www.childrenslegal centre.com/resources/citizenship/ The Home Office application fee is £1,012 for a child to register as British, even for children in care.
- For children in care, legal aid is available for nationality applications following a change in October 2019.
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