Last week, the Government expressed intent to change the policy around deprivation of citizenship, to lessen the rights that people who have wrongly had their British citizenship revoked are entitled to during the appeals process. The Deprivation of Citizenship Orders (Effect during Appeal) Bill was put before Parliament on 19th June, with the first vote on the Bill set to take place next week, on Monday 30th June.
The Bill is being amended so people will no longer automatically have their British citizenship reinstated following a successful challenge of their deprivation order where the Government has scope for and intends to pursue further appeals. The appeals process is defined by the Government as lasting until the point where no further appeal can be made, i.e. there is no higher Court that can be appealed to.
This change is concerning as it reduces the rights that people are entitled to, expanding the exceptions to entitlement to rights under counter-terror laws. The Government has framed all those accused as being “terrorists and extremists” – not only does extremism have no legal definition in the UK, it is alarming that the Government are so keen to widen the net of people who this extreme action can be taken against in the name of purposefully loosely defined national security concerns.
This policy change comes following the Supreme Court decision N3 v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2025] UKSC 6, where the Court decided that a successful challenge to the deprivation order means that the person maintained citizenship from the date the deprivation order was made until the date of the appeal decision. However, the effect of the deprivation order – i.e. deportation and exclusion from the UK – is still in practice during this time for the purposes of immigration enforcement action.
N3’s case centred on this dispute of their citizenship status during this period of legal action, where the Government claimed the deprivation order was lawful at the time it was made (i.e. the Home Secretary being satisfied that N3 would not be made stateless), whereas N3’s legal team maintained that because the deprivation was found to be illegal, N3 had remained a British citizen during the proceedings. This also meant that another appellant, the child of someone who had their citizenship wrongly deprived who was born after deprivation orders had been put in place, was a British citizen.
This is the exact same procedure that has led to the bulk of legislative changes around deprivation of citizenship: the Government illegally strips someone of their British citizenship, that person successfully appeals the deprivation order, then the Government change the law so that they can now legally deprive the same person or someone in a similar situation of their citizenship. No other area of British lawmaking relies on such seemingly punitive and reactive practice.
It’s also important to note that this case, concerning N3, as well as at least four others, are all British nationals with Bangladeshi heritage, who all had their British citizenship deprived on the incorrect grounds that they would have access to Bangladeshi citizenship, even though all lost the access to it after turning 21. This raises serious questions around discrimination and the disproportionate impact of citizenship deprivation powers on people with Bangladeshi heritage.
The Government seeks to make these changes retrospectively, meaning that it would apply to appeals that are already lodged by the time that the Act could come into force. The definition of the appeals process is also intentionally expansive, encompassing all possible future attempts to change the decision. This means that if someone who has been deprived of their citizenship has a successful appeal at SIAC (the Special Immigration Appeals Court), their British citizenship would still not be reinstated, as the Government could escalate to the Court of Appeal. Similarly, the deprived person will remain subject to any immigration controls, i.e. immigration detention or exclusion from the UK, while further appeals against them are legally possible.
We have been monitoring the expansion of counter-terror powers to target migrants and migratised people in the UK, making Muslims in particular more insecure in their status. You can find out more of our work on deprivation of citizenship in our report ‘Hostile Office: The Home Office is Racist by Design’, and more on counter-terrorism under our Hostile Office campaign.