12 Melbourne University Law Review [Vol 41(2):Adv Professor Clive Walker, Special Adviser to the Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation, has said that the UK’s citizenship-stripping powers respond to a ‘growing importance attached to loyalty within core values (such as “Britishness”) as the citizen’s reciprocal duty towards the state which grants the prize of citizenship’.45 The second justification presented the revocation expansions as necessary to meet the UK’s national security needs. This is reinforced by the fact that each expansion was introduced either in the wake of terrorist activity or following failed attempts to deal with particular individuals of concern under the prior law. The justifications offered for each of the three expansions cast pre-existing denationalisation laws as insufficient to deal with pressing threats. For instance, prior to the passage of the 2002 amendments, the House of Lords Select Committee on the Constitution reported that the prior deprivation powers failed to reflect ‘the types of activity that might threaten [the UK’s] democratic institutions and [its] way of life’.46 In parliamentary debate over the 2006 expansions, Immigration, Citizenship and Nationality Minister Tony McNulty stated that the government viewed it as ‘essential’ that, in light of the London terrorist attacks, powers to exclude non-citizens whose presence was ‘not to be conducive to the public good’ should be extended to enable the removal of British nationality,47 and that, ‘it is appropriate to have [this] power … in the locker — if nothing else — given the way circumstances are’.48 Shortly after the introduction of the 2014 expansions, then-Prime Minister David Cameron made reference to a growing threat from Britons travelling to fight with Islamic State, and stated that ‘gaps in [the UK’s] armoury’ required strengthening.49 Such statements cast pre-existing laws as inadequate from a security standpoint. However, they did not identify precise security needs that the proposed expansions were designed to meet, but rather asserted their necessity in general, often rhetorical, terms. Moreover, since 2002, the UK has enacted a wide range of other national security measures, a number of which serve similar objectives to citizenship stripping. The government’s security-based justifications for each of the three revocation expansions engaged only minimally with the 45 Anderson, Citizenship Removal Resulting in Statelessness (n 35) 11 [3.1], quoting Clive Walker (private communication to Anderson). 46 House of Lords Select Committee on the Constitution, Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Bill (House of Lords Paper No 129, Session 2001–02) 6 app 2. 47 United Kingdom, Standing Committee Debates, House of Commons, 27 October 2005, col 254. 48 Ibid col 271. 49 Cameron (n 4). Advance Copy