The British Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee (“FAC”) has published its report on an inquiry held late last year into that country’s relationship with its overseas territories.
The FAC report suggests the government should urgently address concerns in the British Overseas Territories (“BOTs”) regarding the issue of citizenship by descent and anomalies in the British Nationality Act 1981 that have taken too long to resolve. The British government should also consider options for removing quotas on the number of people in the BOTs that can access NHS services in the UK when their own health systems cannot provide the care and treatment they need.
The report calls for all BOTs to legalise same-sex marriage and for the UK government to do more than simply support it in principle. It must be prepared to step in, as it did in 2001 when an Order in Council decriminalised homosexuality in BOTs that had refused to do so. It recommended the government set a date by which it expects all BOTs to have legalised same-sex marriage. If that deadline is not met, the government should intervene through legislation or an Order in Council.
The report also states that belongership and its equivalents are wrong. It recognised that while the BOTs are small communities with unique cultural identities, it was not accepted that there was any justification to deny legally-resident BOT and UK citizens the right to vote and to hold elected office. To do otherwise, the report felt, would elevate one group of British people over another and risks undermining the ties that bind the UK and the BOTs together in one global British family.
Instead, the UK government should initiate a consultation with the elected governments of the BOTs and work with them to agree a plan to ensure that there is a pathway for all resident UK and BOT citizens to be able to vote and hold elected office in territory.
In its response to the report, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office has agreed to lay out a timetable for this consultation process and to set a deadline for phasing out discriminatory elements of belongership, or its territory-specific equivalents.
