Downing Street Says » Citizenship

» Tuesday, March 11, 2008

Citizenship

Asked what the Prime Minister’s view was on teenagers swearing an oath of allegiance to the Queen, the PMS said that the Prime Minister’s view was that he very much welcomed Lord Goldsmith’s review of Citizenship; it had a number of interesting proposals in it, including this one and no doubt there would be a debate about all these issues. In general the Prime Minister thought it was a good issue to have a debate about, he had consistently said both before he became Prime Minister and subsequently, that we needed to do more to entrench the notion of Britishness in British society.

Of course, people would have different views on specific, individual proposals, but what Lord Goldsmith was setting out today was quite a wide range of proposals which would form the basis of a debate going forward.

Asked how the Prime Minister thought this would go down in Scotland where there had been claims that it was just a pet project of the Prime Ministers, the PMS replied that he would not describe trying to forge a greater sense of British identity as a pet project. The Prime Minister considered it to be a very important issue for the Government of the United Kingdom.

Asked how long the process would take, the PMS said that there would be a discussion led primarily by the Minister of Justice, Jack Straw. There had already been a lot of different opinions expressed this morning and it seemed to have sparked a lively debate. It would be best to check with the Ministry of Justice on the exact timetable.

Put that the SNP was opposed to the whole notion of Britishness, the PMS said that as he understood it, the comments from Scotland were in relation to specific proposals, not necessarily the underlying principles that Lord Goldsmith was trying to address. As the PMS had said, the Prime Minister had a lot of sympathy for the underlying objectives of the Lord Goldsmith Review. On specific proposals there was bound to be a debate and different people would have different views.

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Citizenship

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