§ Mr. WellsTo ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many applications for registration as British citizens made under the transitional provisions of the British Nationality Act 1981 are still outstanding; and if he will make a statement.
§ Mr. RentonIn the financial year 1987–88 some 190,000 such applications for registration were received. I announced to the House on 19 May 1988 at column 1080 that a new nationality office in Liverpool would be opened to assist with the processing of the applications and the new office opened on 22 August 1988. Excellent progress has been made and the number of registration applications now outstanding is less than 60,000. We expect to have taken decisions on the last of the outstanding applications during January 1990—significantly ahead of the target date of 1 April.
The establishment of the Liverpool nationality office to process registration applications has allowed the rest of the nationality division in Lunar house to concentrate exclusively on other categories of application for citizenship. Furthermore, once the registration work is completed, the Liverpool nationality office will begin to process naturalisations, almost doubling the capacity available for that work. In this way, we hope to be able to improve the level of service given to applicants during 1990–91.
The difficulties caused by the rush of applications at the end of 1987 are not yet over, but we are on course to improve the level of service to our customers. The staff of the nationality division, both in Croydon and Liverpool, are to be congratulated on the efforts made to achieve that aim.