Home Secretary cracks down on serious criminals receiving British citizenship

• Toughened-up good character rules will mean the criminality threshold for British citizenship is in line with the government’s Immigration Rules.
• UK government reaffirms its commitment to ensure no one with a criminal record can abuse the UK’s immigration and nationality system.

Tougher rules will make sure serious criminals cannot claim British citizenship regardless of when or where the crime took place.

The government crackdown will come into effect tomorrow (31 July), with the strengthened rules applying to new applications from anyone who has received at least a 12-month prison sentence. This re-affirms the government’s commitment to protecting UK borders and ensuring no one with a criminal record can abuse the British immigration and nationality system.

The updated rules are stricter and more specific on so-called “good character” requirements, which are a key condition to be granted British citizenship, and look at whether an individual has observed UK law as well as shown respect for the rights and freedoms of British citizens. The requirements include factors such as criminal convictions, immigration offending and serious behaviour like war crimes, terrorism or genocide.

The changes remove the previous rules where some criminals could be granted British citizenship after a prescribed number of years had passed since the end of their sentence – regardless of the type of crime or where it was committed.

Home Secretary Suella Braverman said:

“British citizenship is a privilege. Those who commit crimes shouldn’t be able to enjoy the breadth of rights citizenship brings, including holding a British passport, voting and accessing free medical care from the NHS.

“I am cracking down on abuse of the UK’s immigration and nationality system, by introducing a tougher threshold so that serious criminals cannot gain British citizenship. This is the fair and right thing to do for our country.”

There will be some exceptions to the new rules, which will be assessed on a case-by-case basis, for example if someone has mitigating circumstances that support an exceptional grant. Cases like this could include someone who committed a minor offence a long time ago but has made sufficient, positive changes that they are now considered to be of good character.

ENDS

Notes to editors

There were 200,362 applications for British citizenship in the year ending March 2023, 11% more than in the year ending March 2022. Of this, almost 3,800 applications were refused or withdrawn.

In the year ending September 2022, 423 British citizenship applications were refused on the grounds of not being of good character.

Good character thresholds previously set out that a British citizenship application will be refused if a person has received a custodial sentence i) of four years or more, regardless of how much time has passed since that sentence ended, ii) of between 12 months and four years unless 15 years has passed, or iii) of up to 12 months, unless 10 years has passed; unless there are mitigating circumstances that support an exceptional grant.

The Immigration Rules were updated in December 2020 toughening up criminality thresholds for those applying for a UK visa. The good character criminality thresholds for British citizenship will now be aligned to these new rules.