The UK Citizenship Test

As interested as I am in Politics, I always thought I'd make a lousy politician. For one thing, I don't really care enough about most issues of the day, seeing either side of the argument makes it difficult to fight tooth and nail for one or other side of the debate.

But one issue I'm happy to fight tooth and nail for is immigration. We have it easy in the UK, we really do, and if through an open immigration policy and involvement with the EU we can balance out the uneven trade and salary distribution around the world then I'm all for it.

The number of Polish people in Edinburgh specifically is incredible, but when they can earn 4 or 5 times in the UK what they can back home then it makes perfect sense that they come over here, put a power of work in for a few years and then go home with a solid base of money with which they can invest in their life. Or, of course, they may stay on and settle into the UK way of life. Either way, I'm all for it.

Polish is the most evident nationality making full use of the free movement of people policy within the EU. Unfortunately, those from more foreign lands do not have this luxury and yet are those with potentially the greatest need as wars and famines have pushed hundreds of thousands from their broken homes.

It is with some dismay that I read in the Scotsman today that the insulting and somewhat bizarre Citizenship Test is still being applied to new immigrants.

With a high pass mark of 75%, a £34 charge each time and such subjective/irrelevant questions as shown below, I am embarrassed that we are making people jump through such hoops just to find a stable country to call home.

A not-so-random sample of questions from the UK Citizenship Test:

How many people in the UK own their own home?

What are the ages of compulsory education? How does this differ in Northern Ireland?

What is the film classification system?

What is the State Pension age for men and for women?

What type of constitution does the UK have?



I'd honestly struggle with each of them, and I wouldn't really care if UK citizens, recently established or not, knew the correct answers either.


Of course the test has been set for political reasons, so that the Government can help those in need but also massage the misplaced worries of the Little Englanders. A group of people who sadly, collectively, seem to have the casting vote in UK elections and therefore bask in the position of having David Cameron and Gordon Brown falling over themselves to appease them. I also see them as a group of people with a mindset so far removed from the collective Scottish psyche that I can only imagine the average BNP person could be more at odds than the average Scot.


I don't have a burning desire to live in an independent Scotland, but if independence means we can distance ourselves from disagreeable policies such as this, set our own agenda and not insult foreigners with meaningless Citizenship Tests then I'm a little bit more in favour of it than I was yesterday.