38. There is ample evidence that the fee for children’s citizenship applications prevents some children from accessing their entitlement to British citizenship. Evidence from community organisations, including the British Rohingya Association and Roma Support Group, indicates that this affects children who are stateless or at risk of statelessness, contrary to the UK’s domestic and international legal obligations.58 Children continue to be denied the right to acquire nationality in the UK, even when this results in their continued statelessness. They may spend years of their childhood with an undetermined or unknown nationality, contrary to their best interests. 39. In recent years, there have been significant cuts to legal aid in England and Wales59 and there are fewer providers of publicly funded legal advice in immigration and nationality matters.60 Legal aid has recently been made available for unaccompanied or separated children for advice on registration or naturalisation as a British citizen.61 For other people, it remains extremely difficult to access quality legal advice. This can mean that families are either not aware of their rights or are unable to access legal advice in order to register their children as British citizens. Risk of statelessness among Romani children and children affected by domestic abuse, trafficking and other forms of exploitation 40. Research conducted by ENS also indicates that some children of Romani families from European countries may be stateless or at risk of statelessness, for example, where parents entered the UK prior to their country of origin joining the EU, their residence status remains insecure, or they are now unable to prove their links to that country.62 A nexus was also identified between (risk of) statelessness and children affected by domestic abuse, trafficking, and other forms of exploitation due to the inability to access proof of identity and/or nationality. 41. According to the Roma Support Group, many people they work with in the UK do not understand that a British birth certificate is not evidence of British citizenship. 15–25% of Romani children in the UK they engaged with did not have any identity documents because many are not registered as nationals of their parents’ countries of origin. There are also bureaucratic difficulties for single parents in accessing documentation, particularly when the other parent refuses to cooperate, and this is compounded by prejudice, lack of information and limited access to support for the parent still looking after the child. In one case, due to domestic abuse, a mother could not obtain Romanian nationality for her child because Romanian law requires that both the father and mother provide valid documents for their child to acquire Romanian nationality through registration, and the mother did not have access to the father’s documents. Concerns were also raised about discriminatory treatment of Romani people by the authorities of 58 European Network on Statelessness (2021), Invisible Kids: Childhood statelessness in the UK: https://www.statelessness.eu/sites/default/files/2021-07/ENS_Invisible-Kids_July-2021.pdf 59 The Bach Commission (2017), Fabian Policy Report: The Right to Justice: http://www.fabians.org.uk/wpcontent/uploads/2017/09/Bach-Commission_Right-to-Justice-Report-WEB.pdf; Amnesty International (2016), Cuts That Hurt: The Impact of Legal Aid Cuts in England on Access to Justice: https://www.amnesty.org.uk/files/aiuk_legal_aid_report.pdf . Chambers Students (2013), ‘Thanks to the latest wave of sweeping budget cuts access to the law looks set to become an inaccessible luxury for many’: https://www.chambersstudent.co.uk/where-to-start/newsletter/legal-aid-cuts-and-reforms 60 For further information see: Bezzano & Carter (2018) 7, ‘Legal Advice: Role of the legal adviser and the case for legal aid’ in Statelessness in Practice: Implementation of the UK Statelessness Application Procedure. 61 Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012, Part 1 of Schedule 1, para. 31A. 62 ENS, Invisible Kids (n 58). 10