By any standards, the Conservative tenure since 2010 has been an appalling period of government. It has left the country poorer and more divided, with dilapidated public services, demoralised civil servants and degraded institutions. A failure of basic administrative competence has been combined with contempt for some fundamental principles of good governance. These have been particularly concerning in relation to the government's attitude towards the rule of law. A properly functioning court system, an independent judiciary and legal constraints on the use of executive power are essential in any truly democratic society. In the UK however each of these elements have been severely tested, strained and damaged in recent years.

This book provides a legal perspective (or more accurately, multiple legal perspectives) on some key policy challenges affecting the UK. The subject matter is broad, ranging from family law to Brexit and from environmental protection to artificial intelligence. However, the book does not provide a comprehensive review of government activity. Instead, it focuses on some essential policy areas in which law plays an unusually prominent role, often in managing complexity and changeability or the application of broad principles to unique individual circumstances. Some proposals may be contentious, but any serious agenda for change will require stepping into disputed territory.

The contributors to this book propose major reforms to both policy and the approach to policy making. A consistent theme is the need for an improvement in the quality of new law by bringing more rigour to the legislative process and for ministers to focus on the operation of law in practice. Both are essential for developing successful solutions to long- term, multidimensional problems. More broadly, however, we argue that the new government should reprioritise and revitalise some fundamental legal principles as a matter of urgency: access to justice; an independent judiciary; a properly functioning court system; and respect for the rule of law. These principles are the backbone of good governance and democratic accountability and run through every chapter of this book.

Introduction

The Conservative Party's immigration plans have proven to be headline- grabbing gimmicks that are not delivered. Promises made are too often broken with campaign manifesto pledges to cut net migration to under 100,000 while seeing it soar to over 700,000 one of many such examples. It should be no surprise that Labour continues to hold a consistent lead on immigration with so much going wrong for the government.

If Labour is to maintain or grow its lead, then it must offer a clear alternative. This is made more challenging with public confidence at an all- time low after 13 years of undelivered promises from the Tories. The public is right to want a clear vision for what a Labour government might deliver if elected and why this will lead to welcome changes that can be realised. This chapter considers new ideas for reforming the fees, work visas and family visas. Any immigration strategy needs an integration strategy, too. I will conclude the chapter with ideas on how the integration of immigrants might be improved. This will include reform of the Life in the UK test and the celebration of citizenship in civic ceremonies.

Immigration and nationality reform is vitally important to me. I am an immigrant from the United States who arrived as a student in the UK in 2001 and began work four years later. I have since had the privilege of becoming British. I have experienced the immigration system first- hand albeit from the privileged position of a White American with a PhD. I know well the lack of support, the high fees, the mind- boggling civics test and somewhat surreal citizenship ceremony. These experiences inform my academic study of a system that has become progressively more chaotic and in need of substantive reform that only a Labour government can deliver.

A self- funded, self- sustaining system

Immigration fees can be so high as to seem extortionate. A threeyear work visa can cost £1,500. With a unit processing cost of £151 each, the Home Office earns nearly ten times its costs. Even health and social care workers in an occupation where there are shortages can pay £943 for a three- year visa that costs the Home Office only £129 to process.

Becoming a citizen does not have its traditional origins in passing any formal test.1 This naturally raises the question: so why create and require a citizenship test today?

The UK's common law has always allowed the naturalization of foreign nationals, subject to various conditions. One of these is an oath of allegiance to the Crown and a second is possessing a satisfactory knowledge of English, among others. These common law requirements were first put into statute through the British Nationality and Status of Aliens Act 1914. While the oath must be performed, there was no set test for knowledge and requirements centred around having residency over a set period while maintaining a ‘good character’. This was changed in the British Nationality Act 1981 which added the requirement that anyone applying for naturalization must have ‘sufficient knowledge about life in the United Kingdom’, but it did not specify how this was to be done.

It was not until the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002 that Parliament formally required that naturalizing citizens prove their knowledge of life in the UK by passing a test. However, this required a test to be put together which took a few years to develop. So, that's a brief legal history of the citizenship test's origins. But it does not explain why a requirement to have ‘knowledge about life in the United Kingdom’ became a mandatory multiple- choice test in force today.

Working through the records, the earliest mention in Parliament for having a citizenship test that I have found is by George Buchanan, a Labour MP representing Glasgow who had served in Clement Attlee's government as Under- Secretary of State for Scotland. In a 1935 speech earlier in his career, Buchanan said ‘the test for naturalisation ought to be a citizenship test’. He argued that while various sons of immigrants living in his constituency were able to become British citizens after fighting in the First World War, their parents could not and such a pathway to naturalization should be made available to them. There is nothing to suggest that Buchanan was advocating for a test sat like a school exam. No further mention of this proposal for a test was made in that 1935 debate or afterwards by him or anybody else for another 66 years

The citizenship test has failed to achieve its original aims and purpose to ensure migrants can ‘integrate into society and play a full role in your local community’ as permanent residents and British citizens. Shortly after the test was launched, the government was confronted with evidence of its mistakes, inconsistencies and imbalances rendering it unfit for purpose. A few years later, the evidence grew that the test was not supporting integration and having a counterproductive effect.

The official response from 2013 to today has been to deny there was ever a problem. Ministers claim the ‘majority’ of feedback they have seen is positive, but they have never offered evidence of what feedback was received. There has never been an official review or consultation since the test launch in November 2005. The only apparent attempt at organizing feedback is from the administrator of the test, not the Home Office. Nor is there any effort to assess whether the ‘Life in the UK’ test does, in fact, promote British values and improve integration. It's almost like they’re afraid to look as it would show how much the test has veered off course from its original justifying aims in order to serve alternative, partisan and inexplicit ends. Perhaps the government hoped no one will notice.

The government claimed it ‘took into account feedback received from previous applicants and others who had provided comments on it’, but did not say if this was a formal exercise or noting what is said about the test in the press and academic commentary. I suspect it this was a reference to a comment made in 2013 about a ‘user survey’ of 664 people who took the second edition. On the basis of their expressing an apparent interest – the results of this exercise have never been made public nor referenced beyond this brief comment – in having more information ‘about history, government and the legal system’. And so the third edition attempted to do this, but admittedly without asking any one of them if it had succeeded in satisfying this recommendation. Worse, this is not what the third- edition handbook claims. It notes the handbook will give ‘a broad general knowledge of the culture, laws and history of the UK’ – adding in ‘culture’ and leaving out ‘government’.

Less than two years after the first edition was published, a new second edition of the test handbook appeared in 2007. The test's design was led once again by the Advisory Board on Naturalisation and Integration, but with a new chair, Mary Coussey, following Sir Bernard Crick's retirement in May 2005. The Home Secretary's Foreword to the second edition, by John Reid, now Lord Reid of Cardowan, thanks ‘heartily’ the Board's members for their having ‘led this task’ of revising ‘this handbook thoroughly’. This echoes the explicit claims in the first edition that it was a product of this independent group, which has the further benefit of insulating the government from direct criticisms arising from any defects with the test.

However, an official memorandum from July 2008 concerning the closure of this Board notes that it offered only ‘ad hoc advice’ about the test and ‘other integration issues’. In Parliament a month earlier, Home Office minister Liam Byrne said the questions were ‘drawn up by experts in computer- based assessment from UfI (the organisation that holds the current contract for providing the testing service) and representatives from the Advisory Board for Naturalisation and Integration. The current database of test questions was approved by Ministers’. In other words, on the one hand, the government was claiming publicly the main work for the test was done by an independent Board while, on the other hand, it said privately that its contribution was only ‘ad hoc’, giving the appearance of creating a scapegoat to protect the government from any further problems with the new test. However, while Crick was singled out for criticism over the first edition where he played a clear leading role, the government was unable to pin the blame on others for its new edition as the name on the front was the Home Secretary's and the Board was disbanded shortly after the new test was launched.

The second edition saw itself as an updated and expanded version of the original test handbook, or what it should have looked like if there was sufficient time to put it together. A few chapter titles were amended, such as chapter 3 (from ‘Britain Today: A Profile’ to ‘UK Today: A Profile’) and chapter 4 (from ‘How Britain is Governed’ to ‘How the United Kingdom is Governed’).

My biggest surprise in becoming a British citizen was how few citizens were aware of the UK's citizenship test, or able to pass it when asked questions from the official handbook. I stumbled on the test in 2009 when completing my application for an ‘Indefinite Leave to Remain’ visa which would permit me to keep my job and continue to live permanently in the UK. Working through the application, I saw a mysterious box asking me to confirm whether I had passed the test or taken an English language course that taught citizenship. Either way, I was required to show a pass certificate I did not have for a test that I did not know existed. Most people I spoke to who were born British did not know about the test and, if they did, had no idea what was in it.

Like so many others before me, I found a practice online citizenship test and promptly failed it. I picked up a test handbook and began studying in earnest as I had only weeks to pass it before my visa expired. When my students would come to my office at university to ask me a question, I would insist that I ask them a question first from the test handbook. I could not understand why so many enormously talented students at a leading Russell Group university studying law or politics – many of whom with an ‘A*’ or ‘A’ A- level grades in Politics – could get so many questions wrong. It was this that had first raised my suspicions about whether there was ever a consultation on the test before or after its launch, whether the information tested was genuinely essential to active citizenship and whether, in fact, all the facts included were even correct.

I have made some shocking findings, detailed in full for the first time here. While over two million have sat the test, there has never been any official review and continuing problems were either unchecked or ignored. Despite all main political parties claiming immigration was a priority issue, the citizenship test and its problems were rarely on their political radars.