Report on United Kingdom citizenship laws. This can result in lengthy and repeated hearings as succeeding decisions are challenged and overturned. The Special Immigration Appeals Commission in Abu Hamza found that statelessness must be de jure to be unlawful.40 In B2, the Court of Appeal overturned a SIAC judgment to find that the failure by a state, here Vietnam, to apply its own laws (as understood by the British court) made an individual de facto stateless and therefore was permitted.41 The case had been heard in the Supreme Court and judgment was awaited at the time of writing42 but reports suggest that the critical arguments turned on whether Vietnam had effectively removed B2’s citizenship before or after the UK order, raising the alarming prospect of states racing to be the first to denationalise its unwanted dual citizens, and whether EU law applied. Another Supreme Court case, Al-Jedda, prompted yet another tightening of the law, in this instance enabling deprivation to take place in some circumstances even if statelessness follows. Mr al-Jedda appealed in 2010 against a deprivation order on the basis that it left him stateless. A series of decisions followed until, in 2012, the Supreme Court found that the reasons for statelessness or the possible availability of an alternative nationality were immaterial; if Mr al-Jedda became stateless at the moment of deprivation, it was prohibited.43 In response, the government brought forward an amendment of the Immigration Bill, now s.66 Immigration Act 2014, which allowed the government to remove citizenship from naturalised citizens, even if this resulted in statelessness, where the Secretary of State was satisfied that deprivation was conducive to the public good because the person had conducted him or herself in a manner which is seriously prejudicial to the vital interests of the UK. This revived a declaration made in 1966, at the time of ratification, under art.8(3) of the 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness, which allowed the UK to continue to exercise its existing powers to remove citizenship on limited grounds even though these would otherwise have breached the prohibition on statelessness in the Convention. In fact, the statutory power that it possessed at the time of ratification lapsed when the British Nationality Act 1981 was amended by the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002 but the UK appears to be within its rights to resurrect it. The proposal that the UK should act to make people stateless shocked many. The compliance of the new provision with international law seemed dubious, notwithstanding the declaration to the 1961 Convention.44 The House of Lords rejected the changes and substituted clauses requiring the need for such a drastic power to be determined by a committee of parliamentarians and for new legislation to be introduced if the government then decided to proceed. These were, in turn, reversed when the Immigration Bill returned to the House of Commons but the government conceded that the power would only be exercisable if it was reasonably believed that another nationality could be obtained. There is also an obligation to report on the use of the powers of deprivation resulting in statelessness (Harvey 2014). Thus, as amended, s.40 British Nationality Act 1981 now contains an array of powers of deprivation, all in the discretion of the Secretary of State and subject to a non-suspensive right of appeal which will, in all cases involving national security, be heard in semi-secret by the Special Immigration Appeals Commission. These powers 40 Abu Hamza v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2010] UKSIAC 23/2005 41 B2 v SSHD [2013] EWCA Civ 616. 42 Case ID: UKSC 2013/0150 43 Al-Jedda v SSHD [2013] UKSC 62. 44 See, for example, the submission of Professor Guy Goodwin-Gill to the Joint Committee on Human Rights: http://www.parliament.uk/documents/joint-committees/human-rights/GSGGDeprivationCitizenshipRevDft.pdf. RSCAS/EUDO-CIT-CR 2014/1 - © 2014 Authors 17