A COUPLE denied a British passport for their son vowed yesterday to continue their fight after the High Court rejected their claim for a judicial review.

The Home Office refused Nazrah and Afham Ismail’s application for a passport for their British-born nine-year-old son, rejecting their claim he was “stateless” because he was automatically a Mauritian national through his mother.

The couple, who married in Britain in 2004 and have three children, paid £973 for the rejected application and face paying another £372 for their son’s case to be reconsidered, which Nazrah said her family was “not able to pay for.”

She said her son was “born in the UK and has resided here all his life. He has been raised as a British-born child and it is unfair to deny him British citizenship on the basis … that he is a Mauritian national.”

Addressing the judge, Ms Ismail said her son asked her to “convey to you, when he is at school his teacher talks about British values … he feels he has been unfairly treated and these British values have not been observed in his case.”

Alasdair Henderson, for the Home Office, said the Mauritian constitution “very clearly” stated that the child “has Mauritian nationality automatically by dint of being born to his mother.”

Once the child has been resident for 10 years “there is another route [to citizenship] that opens up,” he said.

Ms Ismail said: “We have just paid for our eldest son’s application for that,” with Mr Ismail adding that, more than six months later, they had heard nothing from the Home Office.

Mr Justice William Davis refused the application and ordered the Ismails to pay £540 costs.