In its New Plan for Immigration, the Government considers British nationality law to be outdated as it has not changed significantly since 1983.
The changes proposed to British Nationality Law include:
- Allowing children to acquire their biological father’s citizenship if the mother was married to someone else at the time of the child’s birth;
- Introducing new registration provisions for children of British Overseas Territories Citizens to acquire citizenship easily;
- Introducing a new discretionary adult registration route to grant citizenship in compelling and exceptional circumstances where there has been historical unfairness beyond a person’s control;
- Creating the flexibility to waive the residence requirement for naturalisation in exceptional cases.
Although the above proposals are positive, the New Plan for Immigration also proposes to limit the right of stateless children aged 5 or over to British nationality. This route has been considered to be abused and therefore a tightening of requirements and actions taken by parents is proposed before the statelessness provisions can be benefitted from.
