32  S. MANTU do so would not render the person stateless. If citizenship status was obtained through naturalization and the person engaged in conduct ‘seriously prejudicial’ to UK’s vital interests, citizenship deprivation can proceed even if it leads to statelessness. This formulation is the end result of changes made between 2002 and 2015, which expanded the power of the Secretary of State for the Home Department (SSHD) to deprive of citizenship in order to fight terrorists ‘disguised’ as UK citizens. The overhaul of the citizenship deprivation rules started after 2000 and can be described as part of a wider process of redesigning nationality laws with a view to restrict immigration and respond to concerns about national security. Public and political debates stressing the need to rediscover the meaning of Britishness and citizenship have fueled legislative changes. Citizenship was portrayed as a status that needed to be earned in a context dominated by discussions around multiculturalism and (failed) integration and the occurrence of race riots in 2001 (Bosworth and Guild 2008; Tyler 2010). The rethinking of belonging and membership took place while immigration and asylum were being rephrased as security issues, processes that have impacted heavily on Muslims (Choudhury 2017). Initially, governmental discourse presented the need to redesign the rules of nationality attribution as linked to two different goals. Firstly, the need to align UK legislation to international standards (the ECN and the 1961 UN Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness). Secondly, nationality law was meant to express better the executive’s goals concerning migration and the need to develop a stronger understanding of what citizenship really means (Home Office 2002, 9, 10). Updating the rules on loss of nationality was seen as an important way to boost the value of UK citizenship. 9/11 and UK’s involvement in the ‘war on terror’ shifted executive focus toward security and terrorism, as shown by arguments that the old citizenship deprivation powers did not reflect accurately ‘the types of activity that might threaten our democratic institutions and ways of life’ (Home Office 2002, 9, 10). The Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002 amended Section 40 of BNA 1981 to allow the SSHD to deprive a British citizen of citizenship status if satisfied that the person had done anything seriously prejudicial to the vital interests of the UK or a British Overseas territory. The term ‘vital interests’ was constructed broadly as covering threats to national and economic security and public safety, but excluding actions of a more general criminal nature (HL Committee 08.07.02 col 537). For the first time in the history of UK nationality legislation, this power was to apply to citizens by birth or descent and was motivated by a desire to end discrimination depending on how nationality had been acquired (by birth, registration, or naturalization), which was in line with ECN provisions on non-discrimination. One of the most important safeguards of the 2002 Act was that citizenship deprivation could not lead to statelessness, except for loss on fraud grounds. The effect was that only dual citizens could be deprived of citizenship, otherwise loss would contravene the prohibition of statelessness. One of the specificities of the UK system is that citizenship deprivation can occur in the absence of criminal conviction, thus giving the executive leeway in deciding what sorts of actions can be sanctioned with deprivation. Curbing such leeway through judicial scrutiny should function as a guarantee that deprivation is not arbitrary. Because the UK Government wanted to ratify the ECN, the 2002 Act introduced appeal rights with suspensive effects and procedural safeguards. Appeals involving national security concerns are decided by a special court (Special Immigration Appeals Commission) and involve a partially secret procedure, whereby the executive’s evidence of terrorist involvement remains undisclosed to the party concerned. Coupled with the ambiguity of the notion of ‘seriously prejudicial to the vital interests of the UK’, this led to statelessness being the main appeal ground against a citizenship deprivation order.