CONGRATULATIONS, IT'S A BELGIAN!
Boris Johnson on the trauma of discovering that his daughter is a foreigner
Brussels MR HOWARD, Home Secretary, you have a reputation as a Euro-sceptic, justi- fied or not. Allow me to suggest to you another reason why it is nonsense to sup- pose Britain is now at the 'heart of Europe'. We British can live here on the continent. Under basic EEC principles, we can work here. But if we are so foolish as to have our children here, in the conti- nent's broadly excellent maternity hospi- tals, we run the risk of forfeiting, by your laws, what is most precious in their inheri- tance. When I look into the faded-denim- blue eyes of my seven-week-old daughter, Lara Lettice, the injustice almost chokes me up. Home Secretary, my daughter is a Belgian.
When this shattering truth emerged at the British Embassy's swish new velour- and-pine quarters on Rue d'Arlon, Brus- sels, the edge was, at first, taken off my Indignation by the charm of my informant. I'm very sorry,' said Mme Michelle Roel- 1Y, a largish Belgian with octagonal reading glasses and plenty of jewels. Had it been one of those chalky British officials, break- ing off from his crossword to tell me my girl was not British, I think I might have started yammering at the attack-proof glass like a drunk in a benefit office.
At the next window, a Hong Kong Chi- nese called Mr Tang and his two small pudding-basin-haired sons were in similar Perplexity. Wha-ha-happened?' Mr Tang asked the embassy official, also a Belgian, fanning out three apparently identical maroon British passports against the glass. How could it be that one of his sons was fully British and one was not? Wha-ha-we- gotta-do?' he demanded, politely, hope- lessly.
Further down the line, a runaway Tamil was trying to get a message to his folks in Streatham that he was OK. At once, it was as If one was on Ellis Island. Is this what they feel like, those poor, huddled masses that we read about, longing to burst into Europe from the Mediterranean littoral or eastern Europe in a tidal wave? It had come to this. After four years of Plugging away in Brussels, reporting on British interests in the European Commu- nity, for a largely British readership, had I gone native? Were we foreign, then, Mari- na, my wife, and I? Call me an idiot if you like — and some of my relatives have — but it did not occur to me, ante partum, that the issue of two freeborn British citizens could be foreign. `Oh, but he or she can,' said Michelle. `The child may not be British,' she added finally, surveying our various birth certifi- cates. The reason is Willie Whitelaw's 1981 British Nationality Act, which came into effect in January 1983.
A Home Office man was quite candid about its target. The Tories were deter- mined to slam the last bolt against immi- grants from the Caribbean and the Indian subcontinent. 'Your sin,' he said jovially, meaning Marina's and my sin, 'is that you were both born abroad.' True, we were. But had our fathers in 1964 been working in what the Home Secretary has been pleased to define in Note K as 'Crown Service' within the meaning of the Act, for instance, the War Graves Commission or the European Patent Office, all would be well.
As it was, they were merely employed by the BBC and the World Bank. In conse- quence, we suffer the shaming sheep-and- goats separation of Willie Whitelaw's 1981 Act. No matter how British our antecedents, the fact of our nativity in Berlin and New York means that we are merely 'British by descent'; while all you blessed readers who were born in the UK to British parents are, in the prissy, topsy- turvy locution of Whitehall, 'British other- wise than by descent'; for which read, True Brit, Jolly British, No Question About It.
And the essence of belonging to this sec- ond-class category, 'British by descent', is that you cannot, while abroad, transmit your nationality to your children. The object, says the Home Office, is to prevent large families in, say, Calcutta disseminat- ing British citizenship down the genera- tions, without setting foot in the UK, and then arriving in one of those aforemen- tioned tidal waves.
By default then, as the Belgian Interior Ministry glumly admitted, we have a bonny Belgian baby. She does not even get dual nationality, unless you count Walloon and Fleming.
Never mind the worrying practical disad- vantages: her dubious eligibility for British local authority education grants, the can- celled right to play cricket for England, to join the Foreign Office, to stand for parlia- ment, to become head of MI5. What con- cerns me now is the principle. She is just not Belgian. It is no consolation to say, as the chirpy Home Office man said, that she would have 'the same colour passport' as a Briton.
So, Mr Howard, let me put it to you straight. Do you really wish Lara Lettice to be loyal to Baudouin and Fabiola, rather than Her Majesty? Do you wish to see her claimed by a nation which refused to sell us ammunition in the Gulf war? Shall she scamper, her face gleaming with chips and mayonnaise, as thousands of Bruxellois did the other day, to watch the National Day firework display, her heart beating at the sight of the black-red-yellow flags?
Remedies exist. We could apply to you, Mr Howard, enclosing a non-refundable £85, asking you to review her case. But, as Michelle points out, no one has been suc- cessful in this for at least two years. Myself, I am tempted by the Zola Budd option. Even at seven weeks, it is possible to dis- cern how she could do an adoptive country some service in the track and field events. Why not waive the rules, Home Secretary, with an eye to the 2012 Olympics?
But the best course, Marina, an EEC lawyer, tells me, is to go to Luxembourg, to the European Court of Justice. Of course, it goes against the grain to invoke this slay- er of British national sovereignty. Yet the British Nationality Act seems in conflict with EEC law, restricting workers' rights to move freely and settle in another member state, by depriving them of the right to pass on nationality to their children. 'Looking at jurisprudence such as the,- Choquet ruling in 1974, you would have a 50 per cent chance of success,' says an EEC legal expert. We can go with that.
You may say that there is an element of the Rees-Mogg about such a court case. But, as he has discovered, in the face of government stupidity on this scale litigation is the only answer.
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