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Fact Check Analysis: Millions of British Muslims Could Lose Citizenship, Warns New Report-A new and stark warning has emerged from a comprehensive report co-authored by human rights charity Reprieve and think tank the Runnymede Trust, asserting that the United Kingdom's secretive and expansive citizenship-stripping powers place millions of its citizens at risk of losing their nationality. The core claim – that millions of British Muslims could lose citizenship – is supported by the report's analysis of legal vulnerability under current law, which has led to profound anxiety within the British Muslim and minority ethnic communities, Daily Dazzling Dawn understands.
The research finds that nine million people in the UK, which constitutes approximately 13 per cent of the total population, could be legally stripped of their citizenship at the Home Secretary's sole discretion. This vulnerability arises because, under current law, a British citizen can be deprived of their nationality if the government believes they are eligible for, or could acquire, another citizenship, even if they have no personal or cultural connection to that country.
Crucially, the report highlights an extreme racial disparity in this vulnerability. The findings show that an estimated three in five people of colour in the UK could be stripped of their British citizenship, compared to only one in 20 white Britons. This means that people of colour are considered 12 times more at risk than their white counterparts.
The groups identified as most vulnerable, owing to their heritage links to countries like Pakistan, Bangladesh, Somalia, Nigeria, North Africa, and the Middle East, include populations with a substantial British Muslim presence. Specifically, the report estimates that large communities affected include people with heritage linked to India (984,000), Pakistan (679,000), and Bangladesh (part of the 3.3 million Asian Britons at risk). The majority of individuals who have been stripped of citizenship in practice since 2010 have been Muslims of South Asian, Middle Eastern, or North African heritage. Since 2010, over 200 people have had their citizenship revoked on the grounds of being “conducive to the public good,” with the overwhelming majority being Muslim.
Campaigners argue this creates a racialised, two-tiered system of citizenship, where belonging for British Muslims is conditional in a way that it is not for white Britons. The organisations draw a sharp parallel between the institutional failings of the current "deprivation regime" and the historic discrimination seen in the Windrush scandal.
This situation has caused significant anxiety among British Muslim communities and other minority groups, who fear that escalating nationalist politics could translate into widespread misuse of these powers. High-profile cases, such as that of Shamima Begum, who was stripped of her citizenship on the presumption of Bangladeshi eligibility which Bangladeshi officials publicly denied, illustrate the controversial and often questionable application of these powers.
Reprieve and the Runnymede Trust are urgently calling for an immediate moratorium on the use of citizenship stripping and the complete abolition of Section 40(2) of the British Nationality Act, which permits deprivation "for the public good." Without reform, they warn that the UK risks embedding a permanent system of insecurity for millions of its citizens. The Home Office has not commented on the report's findings at the time of publication.
