Why are UK child citizenship fees so much higher than the rest of Europe?

Imagine being born in the UK, considering yourself British, but having to pay the government more than £1,000 to be officially classed as a UK citizen.

Now imagine not being able to afford that fee and subsequently having no right to study, work or travel.

This is the reality for an estimated 120,000 children in Britain today.

The cost of applying for child citizenship has risen by 51 per cent since 2014, way above inflation, and now stands at £1,012. It is far higher than the applicable fee in other European countries – more than 10 times that payable in Spain, France, Belgium and Sweden, and nearly double that of the next most expensive country, Greece.

Not only are the charges comparably high, but the cost of processing is just £372 – suggesting the Home Office makes around £640 profit from each child citizenship application it receives.

When you consider that around 40,000 children apply each year, this amounts to some considerable money in the state’s coffers. Indeed, new statistics obtained through a freedom of information request by Citizens UK reveal the Home Office is raking in £2m a month – that’s around £500,000 a week, or £71,420 a day – from the fees.

Not only are these hefty fees bringing in large sums of money for the Home Office, they are also having a considerable – or as one prominent immigration lawyer put it “disastrous” – consequences for those children who cannot afford them.

Without documents, these young people face being shut out of university and job opportunities; unable, in short, to build a life in the only country they know.

Campaigners warn that parents desperate to obtain citizenship for their children are going to great lengths to do so, with some being driven into debt and even skipping meals in order to save enough money.

The Home Office claims the fee is necessary because of “the wider costs involved in running our border, immigration and citizenship system”, arguing that it is all in the name of “reducing the burden on UK tax payers”.

But even the government’s own internal watchdog has raised concerns, recommending on Thursday that the Home Office carry out a full review of the fee waiver process, including giving consideration to scrapping all child immigration fees for those who can’t afford it.

It’s all very well trying to reduce the burden on taxpayers, but when we’re talking about the life chances of children – and when we know that neighbouring European countries are charging a fraction of the amount for the same thing – it is perhaps no surprise that so many are asking the question: can these fees really be justified?