§ Mr. Ivor Stanbrook (Orpington)With your permission, Mr. Deputy Speaker, and that of the House, I beg leave to present a petition from members of the British community in Caracas, Venezuela. The petition is signed by 83 persons representing 61 families with a total, between them, of 108 children who were born in 24 different countries. All of them are citizens of the United Kingdom and Colonies and are proud of it.
The organiser of the petition is Mr. Christopher Stacy Waddy of Caracas. Briefly, the petition complains that the existing terms of the British Nationality Bill, which is now in Standing Committee, will rob the children of the petitioners of the right to pass their British citizenship on to their children born overseas. British citizens by descent will not have that right, whereas, by the Bill as already amended in Committee, British citizens by registration or naturalisation, being immigrant Britons, will have that right.
The petition ends:
Wherefore your petitioners pray that your honourable House amend the British Nationality Bill to provide that relief from this disability be given to our children and other British citizens by descent so as to match the relief the House has already, by amendment to the bill as first presented, granted in respect of those children also born outside the United Kingdom to parents one or both of whom is a British citizen by registration or naturalization; and furthermore that the honourable House provide that we their parents on their behalf or our children themselves being of due age be permitted on whatever clement terms the House sees fit to impose, to register all such children as British citizens so as to fortify their claim by descent against any impediment to their assumption of their full duties and rights as British citizens:And your petitioners, as in duty bound, will ever pray etc."
§ To lie upon the Table.