Thread by @stevesymondsAI

One striking aspect drawn out in today’s children’s citizenship fee judgment is that the Home Secretary effectively abandoned her own evidence submitted to the High Court & sought to rely on parliamentary debates to show she had done something her own evidence could not show. 1/7

Her own evidence showed she hadn’t considered children’s best interests in setting a fee that deprived many children of citizenship rights, not least because it showed a failure or refusal to understand that citizenship rights were highly important & belonged to the children. 2/7

So, she tried to rely on debates in Parliament led by peers & MPs, with support from @PRCBC1 & @AmnestyUK, many of whom aghast at the fee, to say that because others had complained at her fee’s injustice & impact this was enough for her to have considered this. 3/7

The Commons’ Speaker & Clerk of the Parliaments intervened to say that this was not a permissible use of the parliamentary debates & the Court of Appeal agreed. 4/7

These matters are dealt with by David Richards LJ giving the lead judgment of the Court of Appeal (particularly paras. 72-110). The judgment is available here: 5/7
prcbc.org/news-updates/

It may be recalled that before the High Court, the Home Secretary made submissions about what was in children’s best interest, which the court described as “flat contrary” to the evidence she had submitted to the court. 6/7

This is all important beyond the fee because @ukhomeoffice failure to accord respect for children’s citizenship rights & importance of those rights to children is far from limited to its use of this scandalously high fee. 7/7