Immigration and Nationality (Fees) Regulations 2018 — House of Lords, 2018-06-12
Topic: Mixed Topics
Roy Kennedy (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, my noble friend Lady Lister of |Burtersett has highlighted an important issue in her regret Motion and I agree with almost everything that every noble Lord has said in the debate so far First, my noble friend has highlighted the increase in the fees that have to be paid and that just over one-third of the fee payable is attributed to the costs involved. The Government generally have a confusing attitude to fees and charges, and consistency is at no point evident in the actions they take in this regard. Generally, I am in favour of cost recovery on fees and have been calling for this to be implemented in the planning system. That call has fallen on deaf ears—even my suggestion that the idea should be trialled in one local authority has not been taken up—so council tax payers are left subsidising applicants for planning permission. Despite the Local Government Association calling for this to be brought in, the Government will not engage with it. The overcosts referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Kirkhope of Harrogate, have now reached local government planning, because the fee is a local one and not a national fee set by the Government. In that respect the Treasury is not a direct beneficiary—which might explain its attitude Here we have the opposite. We go way beyond recovering the costs of the application and are charging a large amount of money and, in effect, making a large profit from the process of becoming a citizen. My noble friend asks the Government to withdraw the increase until they have done two things: first, published a children’s best interests impact assessment and, secondly, established an independent review of fees for registering children as British citizens in the light of the report of the Select Committee on Citizenship and Civic Engagement Dealing with each point in turn, an impact assessment has been produced in respect of the regulations which is fairly detailed in comparison with some other impact assessments I have read on other statutory instruments. However, my noble friend’s regret Motion of Regret is specific: it does not refer to the whole of the fees set out in the regulations but specifically to the increase that affects children. In that respect the impact assessment is fairly light As the noble Lord, Lord Russell of Liverpool, said, the new Home Secretary, the right honourable Sajid Javid, has accepted that the fee is a very large amount of money. He said on 15 May: "It is a huge amount of money to ask children to pay for citizenship" So my noble friend’s request for a specific impact assessment to be produced focusing on children impacted by this fee increase is reasonable, and I hope the Government will agree to it willingly The children impacted include those born in the UK; those who came to the UK at a young age, who have grown up in this country and often have no idea that they are not British; stateless children; and children growing up in local authority care. As we have heard, the British Nationality Act 1981 brought to an end being born in the UK on its own as a sufficient reason to acquire British citizenship—unless you were born to British parents. However, the Act recognised that there would be other children who also had a very strong claim, and if the level of fees being charged is becoming a barrier to that, it is a matter of much regret The second part of my noble friend’s Motion draws the attention of the House to the report of the Select Committee on Citizenship and Civic Engagement. This has a section on the naturalisation process, and two of its recommendations are particularly pertinent to today’s debate. On page 120, at paragraph 485, the Select Committee says that the fees charged for naturalisation should be much more in line with the actual costs and that the Government should not seek to make excessive profits out of the process. On page 122, at paragraph 492, it asks the Government to consider whether the fees should be waived for children in care and children who have spent their entire life in the UK. My noble friend is asking for an independent review to be established in the light of this report—and, again, she makes a very strong case I was struck by the figures that the noble Lord, Lord Scriven, brought to the debate. I will bring one final point to noble Lords’ attention. The fee in 1983 was £35. If that fee had increased only by taking into account inflation, it would today be £114.71—£897.29 less than the proposed fee of £1,012 in the regulations. As I said at the start of my remarks, I am in favour of cost recovery, so it should be set at least at that £372 mark—but those figures are stark and highlight why my noble friend is right. The Government should act quickly on this and the House should support my noble friend in the Division Lobby.