British Nationality

Home Office written question – answered at on 26 February 2025.

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Photo of Lord Swire Lord Swire Conservative

To ask His Majesty's Government how many people have had their British citizenship revoked in each of the past five years.

Photo of Lord Hanson of Flint Lord Hanson of Flint The Minister of State, Home Department

The British Nationality Act 1981 provides the Secretary of State with powers to deprive a person of citizenship status only under the circumstances set out at sections 40(2) and 40(3) of the Act. Section 40(2) allows the Secretary of State to deprive any person of British citizenship, should they deem it conducive to the public good to do so.

Detail on the numbers of conducive deprivation orders made under Section 40(2) of the 1981 British Nationality Act, are published in the Government Transparency Report: Disruptive and Investigatory Powers. Eight reports have been published to date providing the number of deprivations of citizenship orders made up until the end of 2023 can be found on Gov.UK.

More recent data will be published in future publications in relation to deprivation of British citizenship 40(2) of the British Nationality Act 1981.

Section 40(3) of the 1981 British Nationality Act, allows for deprivation of citizenship where fraud, false representation or concealment of material facts have been used to obtain British citizenship. Since August 2020 these figures have been published via the Transparency report on asylum data, which can be found on Gov.UK:

For ease, the data below (taken from the Immigration and Protection data: Q3 2024 – GOV.UK report) sets out the number of people deprived of British Citizenship on the grounds of fraud:

Year

Deprivation Orders

2018

50

2019

82

2020

43

2021

273

2022

308

The current published data runs to 2022, more recent data will be published when available.

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