Lord Taylor of Holbeach The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department
3:45 pm, 6th May 2014
Hansard source: (Citation: HL Deb, 6 May 2014, c1418)
“I know that my noble friend is also concerned about British Overseas
Territories citizens. Changes to those provisions require consultation
with the territories concerned and this has not been possible in the time
available. However, I assure my noble friend that the Government will
look for suitable opportunities to discuss this issue with the overseas
territories once the provisions are implemented.”
Lord Avebury Liberal Democrat
(Citation: HL Deb, 6 May 2014, c1417)
“I am extraordinarily grateful to the Minister for his kind remarks and for his undertaking to take an opportunity, I hope in the near future, to raise the question of overseas territories and how their position can be brought into line with what we are now about to agree, as far as our own citizenship is concerned.
We have whittled away at the wrongs of history in 2002 and 2006, and now again in 2014. It is not beyond the bounds of possibility that on a future occasion we will be able to rectify some of the remaining difficulties that affect our nationality law, particularly the wrong that I think we did to people whose parents did not register them when they were minors. It would have been right, not just in the case of the illegitimate but also for those who were born to married parents, to allow those individuals when they became adults to exercise the rights that their parents had not exercised on their behalf.
However, that is only a very minor niggle compared with my pleasure at being able to move an amendment that grants citizenship to people “who are illegitimate in circumstances where, if their parents have been married, they would have had it long ago.”