UK Court of Appeal rules that citizenship fee not in best interest of child
The Court of Appeal in England has upheld the decision of the High Court that the Home Office’s £1,012 fee for registering a child as a British citizen was unlawful.
The case was brought by the Project for the Registration of Children as British Citizens (PRCBC) and O (a child) due to the impact of the fee upon children. In 2019, the High Court found a “mass of evidence” showing that the fee prevents many children from registering their British citizenship, leaving them feeling “alienated, excluded, isolated, “second-best”, insecure and not fully assimilated into the culture and social fabric of the UK.”
The cost of registration fees increased significantly from £699 in 2014 to £1,012 in 2018. The current administrative processing cost of a child’s registration as a British citizen is only £372. The Home Office uses the remaining £640 to cross-subsidise the immigration system.
O was born in the United Kingdom in 2007 and had never left the UK. She is a Nigerian citizen and as of her 10th birthday she satisfied the conditions to apply for British citizenship. O is one of three children in a single parent household. The family is homeless, and her mother receives state benefits there could not afford the £973 fee as it was at the time. Her mother was able to raise the cost of the administration fee but the application for O was refused as the full fee was not paid.
The first issue raised was whether the level of fee was incompatible with the statutory scheme under the British Nationality Act 1981. The claimants argued that the fee rendered the entitlement of children to register as British citizens as futile as they could not afford the fee and that the fee was ultra vires the power granted by section 68 of the Immigration Act 2014. The Court rejected the first ground of challenge stating that it was bound by the decision in R (Williams) v SSHD [2017].
The second ground of challenge was that by fixing of the fee, the Secretary of State has failed in her duty imposed by section 55 of the Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Act 2009, to safeguard the welfare of children in the United Kingdom when performing her functions in relation to immigration. The Secretary of State argued that she had complied with her duties by relying on a statement from a senior official in the Home office and statements made in the Parliament. The Court upheld that by setting the fee at a fixed cost the Secretary of State had breached her duty as set out in section 55 of the Immigration and Nationality (Fees) Regulations 2018.
Click here for the decision.