CITIZENSHIP: FROM RIGHT TO PRIVILEGE Clause 9 made people sit up and take notice of previously little-known legal changes since the millennium which have fundamentally changed the nature of citizenship. Before 2002, deprivation powers had remained more or less constant for over half a century, and were hardly used. British citizens could be deprived of citizenship if it had been obtained by fraud (this criterion has remained constant). Citizens by registration or naturalisation could also lose their citizenship if: > they had displayed disloyalty or disaffection; OR > they had traded with, communicated with or assisted the enemy in time of war; OR > they had been sentenced to 12 months or more imprisonment anywhere within five years of becoming British; AND > it was conducive to the public good to remove their citizenship; AND > they would not become stateless as a result.12 Three main Acts of Parliament transformed the powers of the government to revoke British citizenship: > The 2002 Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act replaced the list of specific behaviours with a ‘catch-all’ criterion of doing ‘anything prejudicial to the vital interests of the UK’ (retaining the additional ‘conducive to the public good’ test);13 > for the first time, it extended the deprivation provisions to those born British, as well as naturalised and registered citizens, provided they had another citizenship; > The 2006 Immigration and Asylum Act reduced the threshold for deprivation of citizenship to a mere ‘conducive to the public good’ test – the same as for deportation; > The 2014 Immigration Act for the first time allowed citizenship to be removed from people with no other citizenship who had done ‘anything prejudicial to the vital interests of the UK’, provided they were believed to be able to acquire one. Facts and figures of deprivation The government publishes statistics on deprivations (although only reliably for the past few years), but does not break them down by ethnicity or other nationality. They show the number of deprivations on grounds other than fraudulent acquisition of citizenship as follows:14 12 British Nationality Act 1981, s 40. The 1948 British Nationality Act deprivation provisions (s20) were in similar terms, with an additional ground of living abroad for more than seven years while failing to register the intention to remain British. 13 By amending s 40 British Nationality Act 1981. 14 See also ‘Over 1,000 decisions made to strip citizenship since 2012’, Free Movement, 8 March 2022. Free Movement’s total includes deprivations on grounds of fraudulent acquisition 7