THE UK Home Office has lost the latest stage of a court battle about stripping people of British citizenship.
A ruling at the Court of Appeal found that it was not lawful to remove people's nationality without proper notice being given, following a challenge from a woman who allegedly joined Isis in Syria.
The woman concerned can only be identified as D4 and is thought to be held in the same Syrian camp as Shamima Begum, who had her British citizenship stripped after she joined Isis when she was a teenager.
D4 did not find out that her British citizenship had been removed for 10 months.
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In a ruling delivered on Wednesday, Lady Justice Whipple said: “There may be good policy reasons for empowering the home secretary to deprive a person of citizenship without giving notice, but such a step is not lawful under this legislation.
“If the Government wishes to empower the secretary in that way, it must persuade parliament to amend the primary legislation. That is what it is currently seeking to do under the Nationality and Borders Bill ... it is for parliament to decide.”
The court heard that D4 had since January 2019 been detained at the al-Roj camp in the north-west of Syria, on the Turkish border along with other women and children who were caught leaving Isis territory.
In December of 2019, her British citizenship was removed by a government minister but she was not formally informed until October 2020. The notification came after D4's solicitors asked the UK Government to repatriate her and were refused.
The woman then appealed Special Immigration Appeals Commission and started judicial review proceedings in the High Court.
The law currently states that the Government must give "written notice" of the decision to remove a person of their citizenship, providing reasons and details of their right to appeal.
Under new rules that came about in 2018, a Home Office decision to revoke citizenship is “deemed to have been given” to the person if the Home Office has made a note of it and put it on file. This is in relation to people whose whereabouts are unknown or if there is no address to send documents or the person does not have a lawyer.
The Court of Appeal said the Nationality and Borders Bill would have the effect of "disapplying the notice requirement in certain circumstances", but notice currently has to be given.
Lady Justice Whipple raised the 1981 British Nationality Act, which she said “deliberately structured the process for depriving someone of their citizenship to include minimum safeguards for the individual”.
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She added: "The 1981 Act does not confer powers of such breadth that the home secretary can deem notice to have been given where no step at all has been taken to communicate the notice to the person concerned, and the order has simply been put on the person’s Home Office file.”
There have been at least 150 people who have had their British citizenship removed since 2014 with a significant proportion being members of the fundamentalist group Isis. However, the information has not been published by the UK Government since the end of 2019 with no reasons given for the delay.
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