Reasserting Rights to British Citizenship Through Registration Solange Valdez-Symonds and Steve Valdez-Symonds At a glance The British Nationality Act 1981 introduced British citizenship as the category of British nationality that would provide the right of abode in the UK to those possessing it. Parliament chose to make ‘connection to the UK’ the foundational principle for conferring British citizenship. The Act included several provisions by which the connection of many people, who would not automatically acquire that citizenship at the commencement of the Act or at their birth, would be recognised through rights to British citizenship. This was generally done through a series of statutory entitlements to British citizenship by registration. Taken together, the provisions for automatic acquisition and registration constitute a comprehensive assessment by Parliament of whom is connected to the UK such that they should be equally recognised as citizens by right. However, this original intention has now become widely forgotten, permitting changes in law, policy and practice that undermine and frustrate that intention and the rights under the Act. This article aims to establish Parliament’s original intention by attention to the statutory language and drawing upon the Hansard record; expose the most critical ways by which that intention has been damaged; and highlight the recent High Court ruling in R (Project for the Registration of Children as British Citizens, O & A) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2019] EWHC 3536 (Admin) as providing encouragement and opportunity for its reassertion. Introduction The British Nationality Act 1981, hereafter referred to as ‘the Act’, commenced on 1 January 1983. The Act made profound changes to British nationality law. Among these changes was the introduction of British citizenship as the category of British nationality providing its holders with the right of abode in the UK. In considering the basis upon which to found this new category of nationality, Parliament rejected each of ius soli, which had previously applied in British nationality law, and ius sanguinis. Parliament instead chose a far less precise principle as the foundation for British citizenship. That principle was ‘connection’. A critical aim of Part I of the Act, therefore, was to establish a comprehensive set of rights by which British citizenship would be conferred on persons based on the possession by those persons of the requisite connection to the UK. The Act necessarily dealt with then current and future generations. As regards the latter group, the Act provided for persons born in the UK and persons born outside the UK. As regards all such people, the Act established starting points whereby citizenship would be acquired automatically. It provided for certain of the then-current generation to be made 139