‘Life in the UK’: the grim truth behind the government’s citizenship tests

As an adviser to the Labour Party on immigration law and policy, I write draft parliamentary questions for MPs and peers to consider. They cover issues like government statistics, border control or their assessment of topical problems. Usually, they receive short, bland replies; but on some rare occasions they reveal something significant – even extraordinary.

For example, in January 2021, Holly Lynch MP asked about the most times someone has failed the “Life in the UK” citizenship test. The reply from immigration minister Kevin Foster MP was very surprising.

Foster confirmed someone had failed the test 118 times in a row. But what was even more intriguing was that he claimed this happened over two years in 2015 and 2016. This looked to me like a mistake, but it wasn’t – and it reveals something genuinely troubling.

The citizenship test cannot be sat more than once every seven days. We might call this “the seven-day rule”, for short. This guidance has remained the same since the test was launched in November 2005.

The seven-day rule has been repeatedly confirmed by the immigration minister of the day in both Conservative and Labour governments, as early as January 2009 – and most recently as June last year.

So, the problem with this parliamentary question (PQ) about the number of times any one person has failed the test is that it should not have been possible to fail 118 times in a row. Under the seven-day rule, no one can sit the test more than 52 times a year. If someone failed it every seven days for two years, this should be no more than 104 attempts – and not the 118 times reported by the minister under a Conservative government that should be abiding by its own rules and guidance.

This problem matters for two reasons.

First, the test is expensive. Each attempt costs £50. Someone failing the test 118 times would have to pay £5,900 for the tests. While the Home Office outsources the handling of the tests, it cannot outsource its responsibility for ensuring that its published official guidance is followed.

Secondly, passing the Life in the UK test is a requirement for permanent residency or citizenship. So, maintaining strict standards is enormously important. The public expects the Home Office to get this important duty right.

And the truth is: it hasn’t been getting it right.

In a new reply to another parliamentary question tabled by Lord Rosser that follows this matter up, Baroness Williams of Trafford – speaking on behalf of the government – admitted that the public guidance about the seven-day rule was breached in this case.

But she claimed that the system used by the outsourced provider does not limit “how frequently a test can be taken”. It would therefore appear someone could sit a test more than once a day until they get it right – if they can afford to – and proceed to apply for settlement or citizenship more quickly than official Home Office guidance allows.

But that wasn’t all. While acknowledging the official website mandates that someone “must” wait seven days before taking another test, Baroness Williams said this was not actually a requirement – and so the government would simply change the wording of the rule on the official public website to make any apparent failure of enforcing their own rules go away. It now says that applicants “should” wait, but they need not any longer.

It is my opinion that this is much bigger than whether a simple rule is kept or changed. The failure to ensure Home Office guidance was followed harks back to 2015 and 2016 – its limitations and/or breaches only picked up by a fortuitous query from an opposition minister. If the question had not been asked, we would simply not know about it.

We do not know how many more citizenship applications were allowed to breach the seven-day rule over the last 12 years of Conservative governments – I hope questions about this are tabled shortly. But we do know it has happened. Changing the website does not erase the failure to ensure their guidance was followed, before – or now.

As for changing the wording of the website, well: it now says to follow the guidance – not the other way around. The seven-day rule is still the official guidance. Who is telling the truth? They can’t all be correct.

The government is, in my view, failing in its duties on doing full checks on citizenship tests. None have happened since February 2020. And, while so much else has reopened, unannounced visits at test centres have been kept on hold when they should have resumed some time ago. The test handbook itself is out of date – it was printed in 2013, before Brexit, and still mentions that the UK is part of the EU.

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Despite three different bodies in the House of Lords – a select committee on citizenship and civic participation, the liaison committee and the justice and home affairs committee – all calling on the government to consult and create a new, fourth edition of the test handbook, as I too have argued for at length, the government refuses to act.

What this all adds up to in my eyes is a clear disregard for enforcing the Home Office’s own guidance – and ignoring growing pleas to make the “Life in the UK” test fit for purpose. Does our government even take citizenship seriously? Isn’t this a very worrying place to be?

These failings should be urgently addressed before public confidence slips even further. Citizenship matters. It is time the government took its responsibilities more seriously.

Thom Brooks is a professor of law and government at Durham University’s Law School