§ `Any person who is a Commonwealth citizen or a citizen of Pakistan or the wife of such a citizen shall be entited on application for his registration as a British citizen, to be registered as such a citizen if he satisfies the Secretary of State that he was settled in the United Kingdom at commencement'. —[Mr. Tilley.]
§ Brought up, and read the First time.
9.45 pm§ Mr. TilleyI beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.
I intend to be brief. I recognise that hon. Members wish to proceed to later clauses. The issue was discussed in Committee, but the Opposition felt that it should be brought before the whole House on Report. Our wish is that the right to register should remain for those for whom it exists at the moment. We believe that new nationality law should be approached from the principle of preserving the accrued rights that Commonwealth citizens and their wives already possess. Our approach is that no one should lose rights that are already available.
The loss of right to register is the issue that has created the most fear, resentment and concern in the black community. The Opposition see this part of the Bill as a racialist provision. The vast majority of those who lose the right to register as British citizens are black. The Government originally planned a period of grace of two years for the loss of right to registration. As a result of pressure by the Opposition, by organisations outside the House, and a mild revolt by some Conservative Back Benchers, the Government extended the period to five years. Even the longer period is nowhere near enough.
Once the period of grace—whether it is two years or five years—is over, those who are now eligible to become British citizens as of right will have to go through the process of naturalisation. Some indication was given in the 865 previous debate about the problems posed for people going through the process of naturalisation. It is important to contrast the process of naturalisation with the registration process that exists at present.
Naturalisation takes much longer. Parliamentary answers have revealed a difference between 25 months and nine months. The cost of naturalisation is three times higher than registration and may soon be even greater. Registration costs £50, whereas naturalisation costs £150, and there has been every indication from the Government that the cost will soon be £200 or more.
Most important is the degree of uncertainty for those applying for naturalisation. There will be the subjective test, whereby a civil servant or the Minister decides that applicants are of good character. There is also the language test, with all its deficiencies. In many cases no reason will be given for a refusal to grant naturalisation. Nor is there any appeal against a refusal by the Home Secretary. It is a secret, arbitrary lengthy and costly process compared with the automatic right of registration for 500,000 adult Commonwealth citizens in this country. This figure will be increased when those who are not yet adults acquire the right on reaching the age of majority. A large proportion of the community in this country will therefore be affected when the right is lost.
Our amendment includes not only Commonwealth citizens but citizens of Pakistan, despite the fact that they are covered by the Pakistan Act 1974. The stark contrast between what happened when Pakistan left the Commonwealth and when South Africa left the Commonwealth was revealed in Committee. South Africans received eight years and seven months in which to decide whether to register as British citizens, or as citizens of the United Kingdom and Colonies as it was then, if they so wished. People from Pakistan, resident in this country, were given a little over one year. That seemed to the Opposition a stark and unfair contrast, which we consider should be put right by the new clause.
The large number of people whom we are discussing came to this country before 1973 and have therefore been resident here for five years. They have worked here and paid taxes here for a long time. They have observed our laws for a long time. They are entitled to expect that rights that they at present enjoy should not be removed by the Bill.
The Government and their supporters ask "Why have these people not made up their minds about registering? They will have had a lot of time before the commencement of the Act, and they will have time—five years now—after." There are two answers to that perfectly fair question. One is that many of these people do not know that they are not entitled automatically to become British citizens on commencement. They are not aware that they are no longer United Kingdom and Colonies passport holders. Many of the people—particularly West Indians—came in the 'fifties and early 'sixties from the West Indies in response to this country's need for workers. Many of them came in the 'forties, in response to this country's need, to fight in the Second World War. They came at a time when the islands that they left were part of the British Empire, and they came on United Kingdom and Colonies passports. They have kept those passports. They 866 regard themselves as still being full United Kingdom and Colonies passport holders—as they see it, full British citizens.
Since that time, the islands that they came from have become independent. By the independence Acts passed by the House, all those people, whether they came from Trinidad, Jamaica or Guyana, became citizens of the independent countries from which they came. Neither this Government nor any previous Governments bothered to inform them that they were no longer citizens of the United Kingdom and Colonies.
Only when they apply for a passport—sometimes years later—to visit Europe, or to visit the island from which they came, do they discover that they are no longer eligible for United Kingdom and Colonies passports. They have not had many years in which to make up their minds. The Governments who took away their rights never told them that they were no longer eligible.
Secondly, many of those people have not had a long time because some of the colonies—again, I speak of the West Indies—have only recently acquired independence. St. Lucia and St. Vincent acquired independence only in 1979. People from those islands have had a registration right that they have not taken up for the past two years. Antigua is likely to become independent later this year. So it will be only after enactment of this Bill that Antiguans will no longer be United Kingdom and Colonies passport holders and therefore eligible for the rights of registration that the Government seek to take away from them.
In answering the question why people have not made up their minds, we should put the counter question, which the Government failed to answer in Committee: why do they go to the trouble of taking rights away from these people, thereby adding to the insecurity that they already feel because some sections of the community do not welcome them here? The Government should say why they have taken this studied objection to the idea of special relationships with the Commonwealth that is enshrined in earlier legislation, that Commonwealth citizens who are resident here and legally settled should be able to become British citizens more easily and more cheaply than aliens.
We have shown that it creates resentment among those who have proved their attachment to our country by working and, in some cases, fighting for this country over a generation. They suddenly find that they are not British citizens and that they have no right to become such. As we heard in the last debate, it is in the gift of the Government, and the Government are determined to be unaccountable in the granting of that gift.
There are apprehensions about the future. Many Commonwealth citizens resident here fear that once the period of grace is over their current civic and voting rights will be taken away. It is the thin end of the wedge. The Government's action is unnecessary. There is no longer an argument for having only one method of obtaining citizenship—by naturalisation. In Committee the Government said that there would be citizenship by registration for the foreseeable future for another class of people. Naturalisation and registration are the two systems. Why will not the Government allow the people who now have the right to register under the law—mainly middle-aged or elderly black people who have given half or more of their working lives to this country—to keep their right to register as British citizens for the rest of their lives?
Mr. J. Enoch PowellIn the course of the debate that the House has just completed the hon. Member for York (Mr. Lyon) put to the Home Secretary a question which I am not sure the right hon. Gentleman understood. Certainly, he did not answer it. The answer to the question appears to be germane to the new clause. The question that the hon. Gentleman asked was: "Why do we have a distinction between naturalisation to which there is no right and registration to which almost everywhere in the Bill there is a right denoted by the typical use of the word `entitlement'?" If one answers that question, one answers the question posed by the new clause.
In 1948, when we last legislated for British nationality, we in Britain still regarded the status of British subject as the essential status. It is true that in order to conform with what was happening in the rest of the Commonwealth, and particularly with what had happened already in the Dominion of Canada, we altered the basis of our citizenship from that of allegiance to that of citizenship. We created a citizenship of the United Kingdom and Colonies which would for us be the gate of access, as it were, to the real status of British subject, just as for the other countries of the Commonwealth their citizenships in the terms of the 1948 Act were their access, as we saw it, to the status of British subject or Commonwealth citizen.
The essential status, therefore—and this was the thinking behind the Act 33 years ago—was that of British subject. That was the mark of our nationality and the criterion for the exercise of the typical rights and duties of those who owned a nationality. We are now deliberately, after 33 years, reversing that. It is now to be citizenship that has reality. Although there will be some vestiges in our law, some of them quite important, of Commonwealth citizen—alas, British subject is virtually abolished by the Bill—we are now focusing upon the citizenship of the United Kingdom as the reality of our status and our nationality.
Admission to that, therefore, constitutes naturalisation. That is what the House was debating essentially during the debate that has just concluded. However, a transition is still to be made, from the point of view of 1948 and all that, to our new point of view whereby nationality is citizenship, and not the worldwide British subject. Therefore, there exists a quasi-nationality, that of the citizens of the different countries of the Commonwealth and, indeed, of some that have ceased to be part of the Commonwealth—which 20 or 30 years ago were still of the essence——
§ It being Ten o'clock, the debate stood adjourned.