The UK is stripping Britons of their citizenship in a “racist two-tier system”, according to a damning new report that reveals that Britain is the only G20 country to do so en masse.
Since 2010, citizenship has been revoked from more than 200 people on the grounds of “public good” – a total surpassed only by Bahrain and Nicaragua – according to the report, which was produced by the Runnymede Trust and Reprieve. In contrast, France resorted to the measure only 16 times between 2002 and 2020.
The “secretive” system allows for Britons with dual nationality, or any naturalised Briton, to be deprived of their citizenship with little access to the evidence or any requirement for the government to inform them, the report said.
A large number – like the most high-profile case, Shamima Begum, who UN experts believe was trafficked by Isis as a child – are languishing indefinitely in detention centres in Syria, yet to face charge or trial.
The report warns that “vague” legislation leaves at least 9 million people, or 13 per cent of the population, vulnerable to having their citizenship removed. It also found a “shocking” racial disparity, with people of colour 12 times more at risk than their white peers.
The Home Office dismissed the report as “scaremongering and wrong”. A spokesperson said the system was only used “to protect the British public from some of the most dangerous people, including terrorists and serious organised criminals”.
But at a meeting in parliament around the release of the report, politicians from across the political spectrum sounded the alarm.
“ I don’t think it’s for a ‘here today, gone tomorrow’ politician to be able, at the stroke of a pen, remove someone’s citizenship, much less stick it in a drawer in the Home Office without informing them,” warned Conservative MP Sir Andrew Mitchell, who told The Independent that the UK has withdrawn citizenship at a “much greater degree” than any other country except the two mentioned above.
Labour peer Alf Dubs called the system “absolutely outrageous” and urged the authorities to change course.
“We haven’t seen any movement from this government,” said Lord Dubs, adding that, as a child who fled Nazi occupied Czechoslovakia and arrived in England on the Kindertransport, he is himself among the 9 million vulnerable citizens highlighted in the report.
“It is just intolerable. Progress seems very, very slow.”
The Runnymede Trust and Reprieve urgently called for an end to depriving people of citizenship, as well as asking for parts of the law that grants the home secretary this power to be abolished.
They said it comes against the backdrop of recent proposals by the Conservative Party to deport large numbers of legally settled people from Britain, and by Reform to deport more than half a million people if elected.
“Citizenship is a right, not a privilege. Yet successive governments are advancing a two-tiered approach to citizenship, setting a dangerous precedent that someone’s citizenship can be removed on ‘good’ or ‘bad’ behaviour, with the actual operation of it being most impactful on people of colour,” said Shabna Begum, CEO of the Runnymede Trust.
We are British, not Brit-ish. These discriminatory powers must be abolished
Maya Foa, head of Reprieve
Maya Foa, the CEO of Reprieve, said that previous governments had stripped British trafficking victims of citizenship for political gain, and that the current administration has “expanded these extreme and secretive powers”.
“Treating people with a connection to another country as second-class citizens is an affront to the foundational British principle of equality before the law. We are British, not Brit-ish. These discriminatory powers must be abolished.”
Since 2010, the UK has deprived 200 people of citizenship, making it a global outlier. The vast majority are Muslim people with South Asian, Middle Eastern or north African heritage.
By contrast, a report by the Institute of Statelessness and Inclusion found that the number of cases globally “are in the tens or less”, with 16 cases in France. Across Europe, there are 16 countries that do not strip citizenship at all, and there are 56 of these in total across the world.
No other G20 country strips citizenship in bulk, the report found.
The Home Office defended the legislation, insisting: “As this report itself states, only a small number of people have had their citizenship revoked in 15 years, and to suggest 9 million people are at risk is scaremongering and wrong.”
Mass deprivation of citizenship by the British government is a modern phenomenon.
The practice fell almost completely into disuse across Europe in the aftermath of the Second World War, in revulsion at the Nazis’ mass removal of the status of Jewish citizens.
From 1973 to 2002 in the UK, there were no deprivations of citizenship other than for fraud, the report says. That has changed in recent years, with the tightening of legislation and a surge in its use, particularly against citizens accused of travelling to Syria to join Isis.
In the past decade, that has led to more than a 4,000 per cent increase in deprivations compared with the previous three decades, Reprieve said on Wednesday.
From 2014, the law was allowed to be applied to naturalised citizens who held no other citizenship, if the home secretary believed they could “acquire another”, leaving individuals like Shamima Begum effectively stateless.
Then, in 2022, the Nationality and Borders Act ruled that the government no longer even needed to notify the individual.
The Independent has spoken to a number of citizens abandoned in Syria who were not informed of the decision to revoke their citizenship. One woman found out when her applications to be repatriated to the UK were denied on the grounds that she was foreign. In another instance, a child was rendered stateless because their mother had had her citizenship stripped before the child was born.
This has contributed to the UK being an outlier, leaving dozens of citizens in northeastern Syria, Mr Mitchell added.
“Most countries have taken back their citizens [from] northeast Syria; even the Russians have taken back citizens. The Americans have been public and emphatic that Britain should do the same.”
Most countries have taken back their citizens from northeast Syria. Even the Russians have taken back citizens
Andrew Mitchell, Conservative MP
In testimonies played in parliament, some of the families affected, speaking anonymously, described a “frightening” system in which “everything’s stacked against you”.
“You’ve got secret courts … where you’re not allowed to be present. And you’re not allowed to understand what’s being discussed,” said Imran, whose sister was stripped of her citizenship.
He added that her family have been given no answers because “it’s deemed too sensitive”.
Asana, whose sister’s citizenship was also stripped, said there is no way of getting any answers. “Even if you want to enquire about it, you can’t really call up anyone and ask about it.”
