LONDON: A “scandalously high” £1,012 fee for children to register as a British citizen breaches the Home Office’s duty to safeguard the welfare of children in the UK, the Court of Appeal has ruled.
The Project for the Registration of Children as British Citizens (PRCBC) argued the “exorbitant” registration fee, for an application which costs the Home Office just £372 to process, effectively removes children’s entitlement to citizenship.
The case against the Home Office was also brought by a 13-year-old girl, known only as O, who was born in the UK but has been unable to afford the £1,012 fee to register as a British citizen.
In December 2019, the High Court ruled that the fee was unlawful because the Home Office had “failed to have regard to the best interests” of children affected by the level of the fee. The Home Office challenged that ruling at the Court of Appeal, but its appeal was dismissed on Thursday in a judgment described as “another positive step in enabling children to access their rights as British citizens”.
In the ruling, Lord Justice David Richards said: “There is no issue but that the recent and current levels of fees have had a serious adverse impact on the ability of a significant number of children to apply successfully for registration.”
He added: “In cases such as that of O, one of three children of a single parent on state benefits, it is difficult to see how the fee could be afforded at all.”
PRCBC’s appeal against the High Court’s decision not to quash the fees, instead of simply ruling that they breached the Home Office’s duty to safeguard and promote the welfare of children, was also dismissed.
Speaking after the ruling, O said: “I was born in this country and have lived here all my life. I am no less British than any of my friends. It makes me upset to think they or other people might treat me as different if they knew I don’t have a British passport. “I have a right to citizenship and have since I was 10. I do not understand why I continue to be excluded by this huge fee.” Her solicitor Solange Valdez-Symonds, co-founder of the PRCBC, said: “The government’s priority ought to be to ensure every child with rights to British citizenship can have this confirmed, with all the security, opportunity and sense of belonging that comes with that.
“I continue to be deeply disturbed that thousands of children are blocked by this huge fee from registering their right to British citizenship, given to them by an Act of Parliament. “This must stop.”
Carol Bohmer, chairwoman of the PRCBC, said: “We are delighted the courts have yet again held this scandalously high fee, which prevents many children registering with the citizenship to which they are entitled, is unlawful.
“But children are still being excluded, by this fee and by many other barriers, which the Government should be doing all it can to remove, and we will continue in our mission to make that happen so no one is in future forced to grow up in the UK suffering the alienation and isolation that is currently the experience of so many young people.”
Steve Valdez-Symonds, refugee and migrant rights programme director at Amnesty International UK said: “It is plainly unjust that any child should effectively be taxed out of their right to British citizenship by this huge fee.
“When making the law on British citizenship, Parliament made clear that citizenship was the right of all children who grow up in this country.
“That thousands of children, including many children born in this country, must formally register that right is being used and abused by the Home Office to raise funds and this must end.”
