Children’s Citizenship Rights in the Supreme Court
The Supreme Court will begin a two-day hearing (23rd June) to decide whether the regulations setting the fee for children to register their British citizenship are unlawful.
The case is brought by the Project for the Registration of Children as British Citizens (PRCBC) and an individual child, born in the UK, for whom the fee is standing in the way of securing her right to British citizenship.
Children who have the right to register as British citizens are currently charged an extortionate fee of £1,012, despite the Home Office itself acknowledging that the administration costs are only £372. This means the Home Office is making a £640 profit from charging a fee for children’s rights.
This huge profit-making fee can effectively leave children priced out of their rights. There are around 120,000 children in the UK who have the right to register and are affected by this fee, many of whom were born in the UK. Preventing children from accessing their right to register as British citizens may mean they miss out on opportunities such as higher education and travel, and may even face difficulties accessing healthcare or employment.
In 2019 the High Court found evidence that the fee prevents many children registering British citizenship, leaving them feeling “alienated, excluded, isolated, ‘second-best’, insecure and not fully assimilated into the culture and social fabric of the UK”. In February this year, the Court of Appeal ruled the fee unlawful because it was set without considering children’s best interests. Now the Supreme Court will consider the lawfulness of making the exercise of a child’s right to be registered as a British citizen conditional on their payment of £1,012.
Amnesty has also intervened in the case to address the rights to British citizenship of stateless children, to whom the fee also applies.