THE Home Office’s £1,000 child citizenship fee was ruled unlawful today in a landmark court decision celebrated by migrant rights groups.

The exorbitant fee was described as “shameful” by Amnesty International, which accused the Home Office of putting profit before the rights of children.

Following the High Court ruling today, the government must now reconsider the £1,012 fee required to register a child for British citizenship.

The court heard a “mass of evidence” showing that the fee prevents many children from registering, leaving them feeling “alienated,” “excluded” and “not fully assimilated into the culture and social fabric of the UK.”

According to the Project for the Registration of Children as British Citizens (PRCBC), which brought the case, 120,000 children are affected by the fee.

The legal challenge, also brought by two children known as A and O and supported by Amnesty International, centred on the lawfulness of the profit element of the fee.

£372 covers the administration costs of an application, but almost double that amount (£640) is charged by the Home Office.

Amnesty International refugee and migrant rights director Steve Valdez-Symonds said this “shameful” profiteering by the Home Office highlights the department’s “disdain for British nationality law and the statutory rights of children.”

Child O, who was born in Britain, told the court of their personal experiences of alienation as a result of being denied citizenship by the exorbitant fee.

“I feel as British as any of my friends and it’s not right that I am excluded from citizenship by a huge fee,” they said.

Before 1983, any child born in Britain was automatically British. Following the introduction of the British Nationality Act, parents who did not have citizenship were required to pay a £35 child-registration fee.
 
Over the years this sum has increased, rising sharply after 2007 when it first surpassed administration costs. The most recent hike occurred in April 2018 when the fee jumped from £973 to the current £1,012.

PRCBC chairwoman Carol Bohmer celebrated the ruling but warned: “More still needs to be done so that children, their parents and carers, know their citizenship rights and to ensure the many barriers to exercising these rights are removed, including this profit-making fee.”

A Home Office spokesman said: “We note the court’s judgment and will consider its implications carefully.”