Indran Murugason, R (on the application of) v Secretary of State for the Home Department

For section 2(1)(b)(i) of Immigration Act 1971, the words in the United Kingdom or in any of the Islands qualify birth, adoption, naturalisation and registration. A parent must therefore have acquired citizenship of the United Kingdom and Colonies in the United Kingdom or Islands through one of those routes. The construction reflects the statutory language, section 2(3)(b), and the purpose of restricting the right of abode to persons with a close connection to the United Kingdom. The court also held that the different purpose of the British Nationality Act 1948 did not assist, and that Hansard could not be consulted because the provision was neither ambiguous nor obscure and did not produce absurdity.

The appellant claimed that he was a citizen of the United Kingdom and Colonies with a right of abode immediately before the commencement of the British Nationality Act 1981. His father was born in Penang in 1948 and retained that citizenship after Malaya became independent. The appellant was born in 1972 and acquired citizenship by descent.

After the Secretary of State refused his application for a certificate of entitlement, the Administrative Court dismissed his judicial review claim in a judgment reported at [2022] EWHC 3160 (Admin) and [2023] 1 WLR 1706. The appeal concerned whether the territorial words in section 2(1)(b)(i) of the Immigration Act 1971 qualified only registration or all four listed methods of acquiring citizenship.

1. Appeal dismissed. The appellant did not satisfy section 2(1)(b)(i) of the Immigration Act 1971. His father had acquired citizenship by birth in Penang, not by an acquisition in the United Kingdom or any of the Islands. The appellant therefore lacked the required right of abode and could not become a British citizen under section 11(1) of the British Nationality Act 1981.

2. The statutory words had to be interpreted in their particular context. This required reading the provision as a whole, alongside relevant provisions and the statute as a whole, with the enacted words as the primary source of meaning. Applying that approach, the qualifying territorial words in section 2(1)(b)(i) applied to birth, adoption, naturalisation and registration. The absence of an Oxford comma did not alter that natural construction, and repeating the qualification after every option would involve the immense prolixity discouraged in [2003] UKHL 13.

3. Section 2(3)(b) provided further confirmation. Its reference to references to birth in the United Kingdom and in the Islands was not confined to section 2(1)(d), but extended across section 2(1). It therefore confirmed that the references to birth in sections 2(1)(a) and 2(1)(b)(i) were territorial references.

4. The construction was consistent with the purpose of section 2 as originally enacted: limiting the right of abode to persons with a direct or indirect link to the United Kingdom through acquisition of citizenship there. Citizenship acquired by birth did not necessarily establish that connection. The court rejected the attempt to derive the meaning of section 2 from the British Nationality Act 1948, whose purpose was the conferral of citizenship rather than the restriction of rights of abode.

5. The obiter observations of Moore-Bick LJ in Ize-Iyamu [2016] EWCA Civ 118 provided strongly persuasive support and did not amount to judicial legislation. The decision in ex parte De Sousa [1977] Imm.A.R. 6 supplied some further support, although the point there had been conceded and not argued. Finally, the conditions governing reference to Hansard stated in R (O) [2022] UKSC 3, reflecting Pepper v Hart [1993] AC 593, were not met. The provision was neither ambiguous nor obscure and its conventional interpretation did not produce absurdity.

• Court of Appeal (Civil Division): Appeal dismissed. The court upheld the Administrative Court’s interpretation of section 2(1)(b)(i) of the Immigration Act 1971. [2023] EWCA Civ 1336
• Administrative Court: The judicial review claim was dismissed in favour of the Secretary of State. [2022] EWHC 3160 (Admin); [2023] 1 WLR 1706