CLAUSE 20—(Deprivation in the United Kingdom and Colonies of persons deprived elsewhere.) (Hansard, 13 July 1948)

§ Mr. Ede

I beg to move, in page ii, line 45, at the end, to add: (2) Before making an order under this section the Secretary of State shall give the person against whom the order is proposed to be made notice in writing informing him of the ground on which it is proposed to be made and may refer the case to a committee of inquiry constituted in the manner provided by the last foregoing section. This Amendment is an effort to cover the point raised by my hon. Friend the Member for West Leicester (Mr. Janner) and my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Brixton (Lieut.-Colonel Lipton), and I gather it is acceptable to them. When the Bill becomes law, cases of dual citizenship may arise in connection with the deprivation of citizenship. First, an alien naturalised in the United Kingdom or Colonies may go to another Commonwealth country and acquire citizenship of that country. Secondly, an alien naturalised in a Commonwealth country may come here and be registered as a citizen under Clause 5.

If action is initiated in this country against a person in either case in any of the instances set out in Subsections (2) and (3) of Clause 19—for example, for disloyalty—the Secretary of State would have to give the person concerned an opportunity of having his case investigated by a committee of inquiry. If, as a result, he were deprived of his citizenship of the United Kingdom and Colonies, he would retain the other citizenship which he had acquired and, 1146 except in the case of Ireland being the other country concerned, he would still be a British subject in this country by virtue of that citizenship. It would be for the authorities of the other country to proceed with the deprivation of that citizenship if they thought fit.

The Amendment proposed by my hon. Friends would have made it obligatory to give the person concerned the right to investigation by a committee of inquiry. I suggest that it would be going too far to make the reference to the committee obligatory if asked for. There may have been a full inquiry in the other country, possibly in a court of law, and local evidence may have been called. I think that the provision I have made in this Amendment fully covers the point raised by my hon. Friends, and I hope the Committee will agree to its insertion in the Bill.

§ Mr. Janner (Leicester, West)

I would like to thank my right hon. Friend for the concession he has made in this regard, and at the same time to ask him whether between now and a later stage of this Bill he might not consider the possibility of changing the word "may" in his Amendment to the word "shall" in respect of the consideration of certain grounds, upon which a person may be deprived of his naturalisation. I quite appreciate the point my right hon. Friend has made in this respect with regard to some difficulties which may arise in relation to a person who has been de-naturalised in another part of the Dominions. At the same time, having introduced a proper concession in Subsection (6) of Clause 19, I would like to point out to him that a similar provision would not be abused, or could not be abused, even if it were obligatory upon the Home Secretary to permit a committee to investigate a case which comes within the purview of Clause 20, because that committee itself could say that in the circumstances which had arisen it was not possible, perhaps, to reopen a question which had been already decided in the Dominions, and it would come to its conclusion accordingly against the applicant.

What is important in considering this matter is that by Subsection (6) of Clause 19, before making an order to take away a person's naturalisation the Secretary of State must give the person against whom the order is proposed to be made notice in writing informing him of the ground 1147 upon which it is proposed to be made. That is also contained in the new Amendment. But if the order is proposed to be made on any of the grounds specified in Subsections (2) and (3) of the Clause, the person affected has the right to make application in the prescribed manner to have his case referred to a committee of inquiry under that Section. Thus by the one Clause, the right hon. Gentleman has gone a step in the right direction, because it is reasonable that a person who is to be deprived of such an important asset as British citizenship should have the right to go before a committee. I ask the right hon. Gentleman to do the same under Clause 20, so that a man whom it is proposed to de-naturalise in similar circumstances to those included in Subsections (2) and (3) of Clause 19, may be treated in a similar manner. I think that if my right hon. Friend does not grant that right, he is, in a sense, detracting from the right given in Clause 19.