Dan Jarvis

Again, if the right hon. Gentleman bears with me, I will come to his specific point in a moment, and if he is not satisfied that I have responded adequately then, I am happy to give way again. I will make some progress. Deprivation decisions are made following careful consideration of advice from officials and lawyers, and in accordance with international law. Each case is assessed individually. Decisions to deprive, where it is conducive to the public good, are personally taken by the Home Secretary. The power is used sparingly. It complies with the UN convention on the reduction of statelessness, and always comes with a right of appeal. Turning to the question from my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Gareth Snell), let me give the House a sense of the frequency with which deprivation powers are used. From 2018 to 2023, on average 12 people a year were deprived of their citizenship where it was conducive to the public good. The available period for fraud-related deprivations is slightly different, but from 2018 to 2022 there were an average of 151 cases per year in that category. Let me turn to the Bill, dealing first with why it is required; I hope this will go some way to responding to the point made by the right hon. Member for North West Hampshire (Kit Malthouse). In a recent case, the Supreme Court decided that, if an appeal against a deprivation decision is successful, the initial deprivation order will have had no effect and the person will be considered as having continued to be a British citizen. This means that people who have been deprived of British citizenship will automatically regain that status before further avenues of appeal have been exhausted by the Home Secretary.