MK (A Child By Her Litigation Friend CAE), R (On the Application O... 2 of 12 http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Admin/2017/1365.html The Issue and the procedural history 1. Paragraph 3 of Schedule 2 to the British Nationality Act 1981 is as follows: "3. (1) A person born in the United Kingdom or a British overseas territory after commencement shall be entitled, on an application for his registration under this paragraph, to be so registered if the following requirements are satisfied in his case, namely (a) that he is and always has been stateless; and (b) that on the date of the application he was under the age of twenty-two; and (c) that he was in the united Kingdom or a British overseas territory (no matter which) at the beginning of the period of five years ending with that date and that (subject to paragraph 6) the number of days on which he was absent from both the United Kingdom and the British overseas territories in that period does not exceed 450. (2) A person entitled to registration under this paragraph – (a) shall be registered under it as a British citizen if, in the period of five years mentioned in sub-paragraph (1), the number of days wholly or partly spent by him in the United Kingdom exceeds the number of days wholly or partly spent by him in the British overseas territories; (b) in any other case, shall be registered under it as a British overseas territories citizen." 2. The claimant ("C") was born in the United Kingdom on 14 November 2010. Her father ("F") and her mother ("M") are both nationals of India. On 8 March 2016 she submitted an application for registration as a British Citizen under the provisions I have just set out. On 18 May 2016 the Secretary of State refused the application. The present proceedings were begun on 17 August 2016, the last day of the succeeding three months, in the Upper Tribunal, the wrong forum. They were transferred to this Court on 14 September 2016. Sitting as a Deputy Judge, Amanda Yip QC ordered the application for permission into court for an oral hearing with consideration of the substantive claim to follow immediately if permission be granted. 3. In making her Order, the Deputy Judge noted that this case appears to be one of a number of similar cases and directed that the others be stayed awaiting the outcome of this claim. She also directed the parties' solicitors (by which I take it she meant the solicitors for this and the other claimants) to identify issues likely to be common to the claims. That must I think be the origin of a document before me entitled 'agreed statement of facts', which refers throughout to claimants in the plural but does not name or give file numbers for anybody except C, and is not signed as agreed by anybody. In any event, the generic issues are adequately illustrated by the present case. So far as concerns the merits, the only observation favouring the claimants that she made was that a claimant might have difficulty in meeting procedural requirements for registration adopted by the Secretary of State, requiring an applicant to prove a negative (that she had not already been registered as a national of any, or the relevant, State). This procedural issue is relevant only if it might prevent the registration of a person who would be otherwise entitled under the statute to be registered, which in turn is a question of the interpretation of the statute and its application to the facts as found by the court on the basis of the evidence. 20/05/2021, 15:49