Alarm as Britain revokes citizenship of hundreds

System allows for 'shocking' racial disparity, finds report

- BEL TREW CHIEF INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT

The UK is stripping Britons of their citizenship in a “racist two-tier system”, according to a damning new report that reveals that Britain is the only G20 country to do so en masse.

Since 2010, citizenship has been revoked from more than 200 people on the grounds of “public good” - a total surpassed only by Bahrain and Nicaragua - according to the report, which was produced by the Runnymede Trust and Reprieve. In contrast, France resorted to the measure only 16 times between 2002 and 2020.

The “secretive” system allows for Britons with dual nationality, or any naturalised Briton, to be deprived of their citizenship with little access to the evidence or any requirement for the government to inform them, the report said. A large number - like the most high-profile case, Shamima Begum, who UN experts believe was trafficked by Isis as a child - are languishing indefinitely in detention centres in Syria, yet to face charge or trial.

The report warns that “vague” legislation leaves at least 9 million people, or 13 per cent of the population, vulnerable to having their citizenship removed. It also found a “shocking” racial disparity, with people of colour 12 times more at risk than their white peers.

The Home Office dismissed the report as “scaremongering and wrong”. A spokesperson said the system was only used “to protect the British public from some of the most dangerous people, including terrorists and serious organised criminals”. But at a meeting in parliament around the release of the report, politicians from across the political spectrum sounded the alarm.

“I don’t think it’s for a ‘here today, gone tomorrow’ politician to be able, at the stroke of a pen, remove someone’s citizenship, much less stick it in a drawer in the Home Office without informing them,” warned Conservative MP Sir Andrew Mitchell, who told