ADD2423 Citizenship Payment Plan

• 1. The Mayor has committed to support young Londoners with insecure status to access their legal rights to citizenship and residence, working in partnership with stakeholders in order to do so. This includes supporting with legal provision for young Londoners.
     
  2. In January 2020, the Mayor of London released research estimating that 107,000 undocumented children under the age of 18 are living in London. The Mayor has called this issue a ‘national disgrace’ and called on the Government to adequately fund immigration advice services, cut extortionate immigration and citizenship fees, and reinstate legal aid for children’s immigration cases.
     
  3. In December 2019, the High Court found that children’s citizenship fees to be unlawful, finding a ‘mass of evidence’ to demonstrate that the fee prevented many children from registering for British citizenship. The UK’s citizenship fees for children are among the highest in the world - the fee is £250 in Germany, £500 in the United States, £160 in Australia and £300 in Canada.
     
  4. The Nationality Act 1981 removed entitlement to birth right citizenship for those born in the UK to foreign national parents. Consequently, only children who are born when their parents have British citizenship or settled status in the UK (such as indefinite leave to remain, or permanent residence in the UK as an EEA National) are automatically entitled to citizenship.
     
  5. Those without an automatic entitlement to citizenship are required to make an application to the Home Office for citizenship or leave to remain. Those who are born in the UK and remain in the UK for the first 10 years of life may have a right to apply for British citizenship. There is also an option for children under the age of 18 to be registered as British citizens at the discretion of the Secretary of State, where they do not already have an entitlement under other immigration routes.
     
  6. The aftermath of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 (LASPO) has almost eradicated legal aid for immigration advice and representation, causing a subsequent reduction in the availability of quality, affordable legal advice. Certain areas in the UK are characterised as legal ‘advice deserts’.Children’s citizenship applications are not funded through legal aid, placing them out of scope for many who are eligible.
     
  7. Following drastic cuts to immigration legal aid through LASPO, the cost of citizenship applications has concurrently risen by over 50%. An application to register a child as a British citizen rose from £673 in 2013 to the current fee of £1012. For children that are born in the UK, or have lived in the UK for the majority of their lives, the cost of securing their future prospects in the UK has skyrocketed. Parents may prioritise funding their own immigration applications, as they need leave to remain to continue working to support their children. Parents may mistakenly believe that their British-born children are automatically eligible to British citizenship and do not realise that their children do not have a legal status in the UK, until they reach 18 and face barriers while seeking access to higher education or employment.
     
  8. Children living without citizenship in the UK face being unable to access work, student loans for university education, or the risk of deportation and detention once they turn eighteen and have no leave to remain in the UK. Without secure status in the UK, young people face being unable to access employment, housing, opening a bank account and increased risks of exploitation through the effects of hostile environment policies.
     
  9. If young people do not apply for citizenship while they are entitled to do so before turning eighteen, they face a protracted process of accessing settlement over a 10-year period. They incur costs of thousands of pounds for their Home Office applications and the immigration health surcharge every few years until they become eligible to apply for citizenship, following 10 years of continuous leave to remain. Young people are also required to raise funds to cover solicitor advice and representation, or navigate complex immigration application processes themselves. Families and individuals end up having to borrow large sums of money from other struggling family members, turning to high interest lenders, or partaking in other high-risk options to fund their applications for settlement. Being tied into the expensive and complex immigration system for years on end also creates mental health issues for young people.
     
  10. Young people who are born in the UK to migrant parents, or have lived in the UK since they were young, are at an immediate disadvantage in relation to their peers with British citizenship. The Citizenship Payment Plan aims to create more opportunities for children to secure citizenship and get on with their lives.
      
  11. The Citizenship Payment Plan (CPP) provides an opportunity for families to fund applications for their children’s citizenship applications and then set up a repayment plan for these families, in order recoup the cost over a fixed period. This funding is then used to fund the citizenship application of other children.
      
  12. Legal representatives, working with KIND UK and Just for Kids Law will refer families that may be eligible to the scheme through an online application. The CPP then assesses each application on an individual case-by-case basis. The CPP then supports qualifying families to fund the cost of a child’s citizenship application fee by paying the fee directly to the Home Office. The CPP then provides a zero percent interest payment plan, which is repaid in twelve equal instalments over the course of a year.
      
  13. Those eligible to apply for a loan must satisfy the following criteria:
• be over 18 years old;
• be the parent or guardian of the child(ren) registering for citizenship;
• the child/children must be eligible with a clear and strong legal case for their citizenship (as assessed by one of the trusted legal partners);
• have (or be willing to set up) a UK bank account in their name;
• be able to afford 12 monthly instalments of at least £84 following the payment of the citizenship fee to the Home Office;
• be able to set up a direct debit mandate for 12 payments over 12 months; and
• have a National Insurance number.

Objectives

2.1 During the three-year pilot, the project will intend to:

• provide 200 families with funding to apply for citizenship for their child;
• support these 200 families to repay the costs of the application over a 12-month period;
• use the repayments of families supported to cover the cost of citizenship applications for more families; and
• use the data that is collected through the project to advocate for scaling up the project, contribute towards relevant stakeholder engagement on the issues that the project presents and contribute to awareness-raising about the struggles that families are facing.

Expected outcomes

2.2 Outcomes for legal providers:

• The project will enable legal providers that have partnered with the project (Coram Children’s Legal Centre and Central England Law Centre) to resolve immigration issues for families in a more timely manner. This will be particularly relevant where the cost of citizenship applications can cause a delay in the resolution of children’s applications or leave the issue unresolved. This will also have a positive impact on the number of families that providers of legal advice and representation can support.

2.3 Outcomes for advocacy around immigration and asylum issues:

• The learning captured from this project will contribute to advocacy around the needs of children with an entitlement to citizenship with quality data to demonstrate the efficacy of the project and the number of families that are struggling under the current system.
• If this project is successful, it provides further incentive for a range of funders to support this work or to make the case for the Government to reverse the rise in fees.

2.4 Outcomes for statutory organisations:

• If the project is successful, the next stages for the project will explore the possibility of support from a range of statutory partners, such as local Government stakeholders.

3.1. Under Section 149 of the Equality Act 2010, as a public authority, the GLA must have ‘due regard’ to the Public Sector Equality Duty (PSED), that is the need to: • Eliminate unlawful discrimination, harassment and victimisation; • Advance equality of opportunity; and • Foster good relations between people who have a protected characteristic and those who do not.

3.2. Equality, integration and inclusion inform this work. Supporting young people to access citizenship in an affordable way helps to mitigate the effects of discrimination and social exclusion arising out of insecure immigration status.

3.3. By supporting families to access affordable routes to secure citizenship for their children, the effects of debt and financial struggles are mitigated.

3.4. The effects of mental health struggles that arise out of financial struggles, being implicated in complex Home Office processes for many years, the threat of deportation and uncertainty over rights and entitlements are mitigated by providing affordable routes to citizenship for children through this scheme.

3.5. The guidance and resources are produced in accordance with best practice for accessible communications.

Key risks and issues

1. 4.1 There are no conflicts of interest to note for any of those involved in the drafting or clearance of the decision.

Links to Mayoral strategies and priorities

4.2 This work forms part of the Mayor’s social integration strategy ‘All of Us’, to remove barriers to integration relating to ability to access legal rights to citizenship and residence.

Impact assessments and consultations.

1. 4.3 Through the Citizenship and Integration Initiative (CII) the GLA is in close contact with civil society organisations that work with young Londoners with insecure immigration status and eligibility for citizenship, including organisations that are involved in the pilot.

​​​​​​​​​​​​​​4.4 The GLA recently published research that estimates more than half of the UK’s 674,000 undocumented adults and children live in London (397,000). It is estimated that 215,000 undocumented children are in the UK, which suggests that the population of undocumented children in the UK increased by almost 56% between March 2011 and March 2017. Of this, 107,000 children are living in London and there are a further 26,000 undocumented young Londoners (aged 18-24). A significant proportion of these young people may be eligible for citizenship.

5.1 Approval is being sought for expenditure of £24,000 to contribute towards the expansion of the Citizenship Payment Plan pilot programme.​​​​​​​

5.2 This expenditure will be funded from the Insecure Status 2019/20 programme budget, held within the Communities and Social Policy unit.

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