Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Law, Vol 34, No 2, 2020 enjoy the advantage of having acquired citizenship at birth by reason of the status of one or other of their parents. At the Bill’s committee stage in the Commons, the Minister laid out what he referred to as ‘the fundamental position’: ‘We believe that it is extremely important that those who grow up in this country should have as strong a sense of security as possible.’18 Social harmony and race relations were among the reasons emphasised by Ministers for the imperative of ensuring the ‘minimum of fear, apprehension and doubt’ among the population by making provision whereby citizenship would be secured for all children growing up in the UK. The starting point – whereby citizenship is acquired at birth to a parent who is either a British citizen or settled – reflected the view that citizenship or settlement of the parent was sufficient indication of the child’s future to immediately satisfy the intended condition of connection. As the Minister explained somewhat floridly: ‘There are people who are clearly not birds of passage but are born here to those who are settled here, and who by definition live here.The term “settled here” is about living in this country, and about having the intention of continuing to do so. It would be reasonable on both humane and common sense grounds to pick up those children when they are born, rather than to wait’.19 We will momentarily come to the question of waiting for what. For now, it is instructive to reflect on the clear focus of this explanation on the situation of the child. It is not that the status of a parent in itself establishes the connection of the child. Rather, the status of the parent, if settled, entails a reasonable expectation that the child will grow up in the UK. In recognition of that – the child’s connection to the UK – s 1(1) of the Act confers British citizenship upon a child. This notion of connection is reflected in the two primary ways by which Parliament chose to recognise the connection of children born in the UK to parents who were neither British citizens nor settled. In each of the two relevant provisions, the focus is similarly on the circumstances of the child – in one case as revealed by a parent’s status and in the other case with no reference to the parent whatsoever. Section 1(3) and (4) of the Act each relate solely to children born in the UK. In the case of the former, a child born in the UK acquires an entitlement to register as a British citizen if – before she, he or they reach majority – one or other parent becomes a British citizen or settled. The provision straightforwardly reflects the intention in s 1(1). Children born in the UK, who are not, in the Minister’s words, ‘birds of passage’, should grow up with the security of British citizenship. Just as a child’s future in the UK is confirmed by a parent being settled at the time of the child’s birth, so it is confirmed by a parent becoming settled after the child’s birth. It is no less humane and common sense to recognise the connection of a child born in the UK at the point a parent becomes settled by providing an entitlement to registration than it is to recognise the connection of a child at birth in the UK where a parent is already settled. Section 1(4) completes the picture. It provides an entitlement to register as a British citizen that is entirely independent of a child’s parents. The entitlement arises on a child’s attaining the 18 19 Hansard HC, Standing Committee F, 24 February 1981: Col 177. Hansard HC, Standing Committee F, 24 February 1981: Col 183. 144