25 February 2020

When it comes to access to justice, protecting the rights of children should be our priority. This week we highlight the huge impact of the extortionate application fees which are preventing many children from being registered as British citizens, and the action which is being taken to challenge this.

Excessive fees and their consequences

An application for a child to be registered as a British citizen currently costs £1,012, plus an additional £19.20 for the biometric enrolment fee. This is a substantial sum given that the administrative cost for processing such applications is only £372 per application. The rationale behind such a high fee is for the financing of other immigration and border force expenses, despite these being unrelated to nationality applications. There are no exemptions, reductions or waivers to allow for individual circumstances.

Child citizenship registration fee deemed unlawful

In December 2019, following a challenge brought by The Project for the Registration of Children as British Citizens (PRCBC), the High Court issued a landmark ruling that the fee for child registration applications was unlawful.

PRCBC challenged the fee on two main grounds in the High Court: first, the law does not permit such a high amount to be charged; and second, the Secretary of State did not consider the best interests of children affected when setting the fee level.

The Court ruled that the fee for child registration applications was unlawful on the second ground. The Court heard evidence of the significant detrimental impact of this fee, particularly on children from low-income backgrounds and those under local authority care unable to afford the cost of the application, despite meeting the requirements under the nationality provisions. Evidence was raised of children born in the UK, who held no immigration status but were entitled to apply for British citizenship, being at risk of removal from the UK as they could not afford the fee. Mass evidence was also adduced of children born in the UK feeling “alienated, excluded, isolated, “second-best”, insecure and not fully assimilated into the culture and social fabric of the UK”.

Failing to regard the welfare of children

The Court found that the Secretary of State had failed in its duty to make the best interests of the child its primary consideration when setting the application fee. Significantly, in the voluminous documents presented, the Court could not find evidence showing that the Secretary of State had identified where the best interests of children seeking registration lay nor showing that it had properly characterised those interests. Reference was made to the Secretary of State having minimised the importance of children’s entitlement to citizenship by calling it merely a ‘voluntary’ scheme, ignoring the compelling intangible benefits of “being British”, and creating practical difficulties for many.

Effects of the ruling

As a declaratory judgment, the Secretary of State should reconsider how it assesses and sets its fees for child registration applications. The Secretary of State may well be taking steps to challenge the decision, in which case we would continue to see the significant impacts in the meantime for children who simply cannot afford this fee.

Given the extremely concerning evidence, it is hoped at the very minimum that there will be a reduced fee or fee waiver scheme applied in certain circumstances.

British citizenship should not exist as a privilege for only those children who can afford it. This landmark ruling is an important signal to access to justice for children and serves as a necessary legal reminder to public authorities to have children’s interests as a paramount consideration in internal policy decisions, which can otherwise create huge barriers for vulnerable groups in society.