Nationality and Citizenship in UK Law

Although nationality is not a "trump card" it is of particular importance in assessing the best interests of any child. The UNCRC recognises the right of every child to be registered and acquire a nationality (Article 7) and to preserve her identity, including her nationality (Article 8).

This is not, it is agreed, a factor of limitless importance in the sense that it will prevail over all other considerations. It is a factor, however, that must rank higher than any other. It is not merely one consideration that weighs in the balance alongside other competing factors. Where the best interests of the child clearly favour a certain course, that course should be followed unless countervailing reasons of considerable force displace them.

The first of these is in its role as a contributor to the debate as to where the child's best interests lie. It seems to me self evident that to diminish a child's right to assert his or her nationality will not normally be in his or her best interests. As Lady Hale has said, this is not an inevitably decisive factor but the benefits that British citizenship brings, as so aptly described by Lord Hope and Lady Hale, must not readily be discounted.

It involves there being a continued connection to life in that country; something that ties a claimant to his or her country of origin. If this were not the case then it would appear that a person's nationality of the country of proposed deportation could of itself lead to a failure to meet the requirements of the rule.

One is looking for a degree of harshness going beyond what would necessarily be involved for any child faced with the deportation of a parent. What it does not require in my view (and subject to the discussion of the cases in the next section) is a balancing of relative levels of severity of the parent's offence, other than is inherent in the distinction drawn by the section itself by reference to length of sentence.

But what we are concerned with here is legislation which takes away without compensation from a section of the citizen body singled out on racial grounds all their property on which the State passing the legislation can lay its hands and, in addition, deprive them of their citizenship. To my mind a law of this sort constitutes so grave an infringement of human rights that the Courts of this country ought to refuse to recognise it as a law at all.

In my judgment, therefore, the assessment of the best interests of the children must be made on the basis that the facts are as they are in the real world. If neither parent has the right to remain, then that is the background against which the assessment is conducted. Thus the ultimate question will be: is it reasonable to expect the child to follow the parent with no right to remain to the country of origin?