Rejected petition The Welsh Government must object to The Nationality and Borders Bill

The Welsh Government has long held the ambition of becoming a 'Nation of Sancturary'.

More details

We call upon The Welsh Government, to oppose the UK Government’s ‘Nationality and Borders Bill’ by all legislative means possible.

The Nationality and Borders Bill is an attack on Refugee and Asylum Seeker rights, and is in direct conflict with the Welsh Governments aims to be a Nation Of Sanctuary.

The Nationality and Borders Bil, proposed by UK Home Secretary Priti Patel, aims to introduce legislation such as: offshore detention, differential treatment, giving immunity from manslaughter to Border Force staff if a person dies at sea and removing rights to family reunion.

These are all proposals that undermine Welsh Government’s ambition to be A Nation of Sanctuary.

Therefore, we urge the Welsh Government and Welsh Parliament MS’ to loudly and publicly object to this bill, through all legislative means possible.

Why was this petition rejected?

It’s about something that the Senedd or Welsh Government is not responsible for.

The Government of Wales Act 2006 establishes the extent of the Senedd’s power to make new laws and amend existing law (also known as legislative competence). Schedules 7A and 7B of the 2006 Act set out the issues which are ‘restricted’ or ‘reserved’ - i.e. areas where the UK Parliament, not the Senedd, can legislate.

Paragraphs 28 and 29 of Schedule 7A to the Government of Wales Act 2006 reserve nationality and immigration, respectively.

The Explanatory Notes to Schedule 7A provide that the reservations cover (amongst other things) entry to the UK, extending leave to remain in the UK, the granting of political or other forms of asylum and humanitarian protection and the status and capacity in the UK of non-British citizens. As such, the subject matter of the UK Bill is outside the legislative competence of the Senedd.

As a result, it is not possible for the Senedd to take the action called for by your petition.

Further information about the legislative powers of the Senedd can be found here:
https://senedd.wales/how-we-work/our-role/powers/

You may wish to consider petitioning the UK Parliament about this issue instead: https://petition.parliament.uk/

We only reject petitions that don’t meet the petition standards

Rejected petitions are published in the language in which they were submitted

Date submitted 17 November 2021
Get petition data (JSON format)

About petition data

The data shows the number of people who have signed the petition by country as well as in the constituency of each Member of the Senedd. This data is available for all petitions on the site. It is not a list of people who have signed the petition. The only name that is shared on the site is that of the petition creator.