Fees For Registering Children As British Citizens

EDM number 1262 in 2017-19, proposed by Stuart McDonald on 14/05/2018.
Categorised under the topics of Children and families and Nationality.

That this House believes that tens of thousands of children born and living in the UK and entitled to register as British citizens under the British Nationality Act 1981 are nevertheless undocumented and therefore unable to acces public services, social security, private rented accommodation, the labour market and many other benefits of citizenship; further believes that some will simply be unaware of the requirement to register and many others will not have the means to afford the fee of over £1,000 charged by the Home Office; notes that the estimated cost of processing such applications is only £372; believes that no child should be prevented from taking up their entitlement to British citizenship simply because of cost; calls for the fee for applications to be reduced to no higher than the cost of processing, for exemptions for children in local authority care, and for fee waivers for children who cannot afford to pay any fee at all; and further calls for steps to be taken to raise awareness of the need to register the right of these children to British nationality.

This motion has been signed by a total of 72 MPs.