Gurkha Pensions

Damian Collins Excerpts

Thursday 11th September 2014 Commons Chamber

[Damian Collins (Folkestone and Hythe) (Con)]

I pay tribute to the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock (Jackie Doyle-Price) and to the terrific work she has done leading the inquiry on Gurkha pensions and welfare, which has been a considerable piece of work. Hon. Members will know that all-party groups do not have the resources of Select Committees or formal Committees of the House; nor do they have huge secretariats and teams to support them, so holding such an inquiry is a considerable undertaking. I congratulate her on that.

[Jackie Doyle-Price]

My hon. Friend is being too generous. He generously made his office available to support me and I am very grateful for that.

[Damian Collins]

It is kind of my hon. Friend to mention that. I thank Daniel Kirkpatrick from my office, who worked on the inquiry.

Like my hon. Friend, I have served on Select Committees and on big inquiries that attracted a lot of attention from the outside world, but I have never attended hearings that attracted such a large audience from the public as did the Gurkha welfare inquiry hearings. Hundreds of members of the Gurkha community and veterans came to listen to the evidence sessions to make their point, which clearly showed the strong feeling in the Gurkha community that serious outstanding issues have to be considered.

As Member of Parliament for Folkestone, I am proud to represent a significant Gurkha and Nepalese community. Shorncliffe barracks in Folkestone is the home barracks for the Royal Gurkha Rifles. We take an active interest in their work and they have conducted themselves with great distinction on numerous tours of duty in Afghanistan and service throughout the world for the British armed forces. We are extremely grateful for everything they have done. The Gurkhas clearly play a unique role in the British Army and we greatly benefit from that.

My hon. Friend set out clearly the issues that the inquiry covered, on Gurkha pensions and Gurkha welfare. I shall not repeat everything she said, but she hit on the most important aspect, which is that there needs to be fairness in the way we deal with those issues from the past. We are approaching the 200th anniversary of the start of this country’s cordial relationship with Nepal. This year, which marks the centenary of the outbreak of the first world war, is the right time to reflect on the service of the Gurkhas to the British armed forces, their service to this country and the amount we have benefited from that service. We should also consider what outstanding historical issues need to be resolved.

I supported the Gurkha campaign to give Gurkhas the right to live and settle in the United Kingdom. Service to this country through the armed forces should in itself be a means of qualifying for British citizenship; I see nothing wrong with that. Indeed, many people around the world who qualify for British citizenship do not have the track record of service to our country that Gurkha veterans have. If someone is prepared to fight and die in the cause of Great Britain and its allies, they should have the right to live here. That is what the Gurkhas now have.

My hon. Friend was right to focus on, in particular, the rights of the 7,000 or so ex-Gurkhas who qualify for no pension at all because they did not complete 15 years’ service. Many of them are veterans of conflicts. Many are veterans of the campaign in Malaya. When that ended, they returned to discover that they no longer had a role and they were made redundant from their post in the Army. As they did not qualify, they did not receive a pension. We should consider whether they should receive a pension, based on the number of years they served short of 15 years, as compensation for their service. We considered that matter in great depth during the inquiry.

A number of Gurkhas were dismissed from their post—many of them believe unfairly, particularly with respect to the incident in Hawaii, which the committee looked at. We ask the Ministry of Defence to look again at that incident to consider whether Gurkhas might have been dismissed unfairly, and therefore to consider whether they should qualify for some pension, based on the number of years they served. As my hon. Friend said, we should also consider the case of Gurkhas who qualify for no pension who were medically discharged from the armed forces through no fault of their own.

We cannot rewrite the terms and conditions of 30 or 40 years ago or more, and no one has alleged that the Ministry of Defence or the Government have in any way not honoured the letter of the commitments made to the Gurkhas at the time, but the question is whether the spirit of those commitments was fair and whether decisions were taken some years ago that would not be taken today—if Ministers were taking those decisions now, they would act differently and in a way that was fairer and that recognised the significant contribution that those Gurkhas made to our armed forces, even though they did not complete 15 years’ service. It is sad to see people who served in our armed forces with distinction but fell short of 15 years’ service living on a pittance and in poor conditions. We would not want that for any veterans of our armed forces, and we do not want it for the Gurkha community.

It is important to consider providing more support for the Gurkha Welfare Trust to support Gurkhas living independently in this country. The fines that the Government have levied on the banks as a result of the manipulation of the LIBOR rates could be used to support military charities. The Gurkha Welfare Trust would be an extremely deserving cause and using some of that money to support Gurkha veterans would be extremely appropriate. I ask the Government seriously to consider that as an opportunity to meet some of the funding commitments that the inquiry sets out. We live in extremely straitened times, and however much we would like to resolve some of these outstanding Gurkha issues, we cannot pretend that there are limitless funds with which to do so. It would perhaps therefore be appropriate to use some of the LIBOR fine money for that purpose.

Through the Department for International Development, we are able to support Nepal as a country, an ally and a friend. Any commitment we could give to making investments through the DFID budget to support welfare and health services in Nepal that provided equality of service and was attractive to ex-Gurkhas could encourage some of them to stay in the country or to return there. Many of them would like to do that, as they said during the course of the inquiry. That would be an appropriate use of resources that would further help to solve the problem.

Encouraging Gurkhas who want to return home to do so, and providing some of them with a decent standard of living through a fair pension that is linked to their years of service in the armed forces, is not only the right thing to do but could save the Treasury funds in the long run, because ex-Gurkhas might then no longer be as reliant on benefits as some of them inevitably have to be currently, as their own income is so low due to receiving so little support from their pension for the service that they gave.

When Her Majesty the Queen made her state visit to Ireland, she said in her speech at Dublin castle that looking back at the history of Anglo-Irish relations, there are some things one would do differently and some things that one would not have done at all. When we look back at our very long friendship with the Nepalese nation and the wonderful years of service that Gurkhas have given to our country, I think we will say that there are some incidences where we would have done certain things differently or perhaps not have done them at all. As my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock presents the report from the all-party group’s inquiry, and as we approach the Gurkhas’ 200th anniversary and commemorate the centenary of the outbreak of the first world war, this is the right time to consider some of those outstanding issues and settle some of those old grievances.

--- Later in debate ---

[Roger Williams]

That is most helpful. I dare not mention the Barnett formula in this debate, but I was wondering whether such money might flow into Wales. I thank my hon. Friend for his very kind offer.

The major subject of the report was the equalisation of pensions. There is no point trying to skate around it: like other hon. Members, I find it very difficult to recommend a move towards equalising pensions, because it is very hard retrospectively to alter pension arrangements that were entered into voluntarily by people when they were recruited into the Gurkha regiments.

The report mentioned a number of difficult issues, which are obviously of real concern to Gurkha veterans, that I think the Government could do something about. If the veterans were funded by some of the LIBOR money that is meant to be used to support the work of the military covenant, that would be very well received by the Gurkhas. Let me run quickly through such issues.

[Damian Collins]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the inquiry highlighted a number of terms and conditions that seem extremely archaic? For example, it was not until the 1990s that Gurkhas were allowed to marry non-Gurkhas.

[Roger Williams]

My hon. Friend is quite right. That is a point that I was going to come on to. Not only were Gurkhas not allowed to marry non-Gurkha women; if they did, they were discharged from the Army and, as a result, had no pension at all. That affects some of the Gurkha veterans that my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock mentioned.

We have an arrangement with the Sultan of Brunei, who runs a very light-touch taxation system. Our Gurkha soldiers, being based in Brunei, were not liable to tax, but the Ministry of Defence took some money off their pay in management fees. That was equivalent to a tax. The MOD could look at that again, because it was iniquitous. Gurkhas serving in this country were given dummy national insurance numbers, but they did not get the benefits that a national insurance number and paying national insurance in this country should generate.

Another issue is health care in Nepal. Although the pension of the Gurkhas in Nepal was increased to address that issue, they have to pay for their health care. As I understand it, Gurkhas in the Indian army do not have to pay for their health care. The Ministry of Defence could look at that issue as well.

During the evidence to the inquiry, there was criticism of the Gurkha Welfare Trust and its work in Nepal. I have talked to a constituent who was quite senior in the trust, but he said that he was out of touch with what was going on at the moment and referred me to somebody else. However, I have not had time to talk to that gentleman yet. The criticism was made that the funds of the Gurkha Welfare Trust were not used entirely for the benefit of Gurkha soldiers in Nepal and their families. A review of the work of the Gurkha Welfare Trust would perhaps not be inappropriate.

Gurkhas were encouraged to invest in Equitable Life to increase their pensions. I wonder whether the Gurkhas who did invest in Equitable Life have received the benefits that the Government have given to other people who invested in it to compensate them for their losses, especially if they were advised by the MOD or some other organisation to save through that route.

Once again, we come back to the main grievance of the Gurkha people, which is the equalisation of pensions. There are some quite young Gurkha retirees in Brecon who are in good employment, as the hon. Member for Aldershot described. They tell me that they were senior NCOs or warrant officers in the Gurkha regiment, but because only part of their service was after 1997, the pensions that they receive are a lot lower than the pensions of people who were in British regiments. They are really aggrieved about that, as one can understand. They put their lives on the line for this country, yet they are not getting the same rewards as many of their fellow soldiers.

It is difficult for the inquiry or the MOD to make a move at the moment because there is an appeal to the European Court of Human Rights. As far as I am concerned, the matter is in limbo and it would be difficult for anybody to come to a conclusion. There is much in the report and the work that we have done that will be welcomed by the Gurkhas, but their great concern is that there will be no move to equalise pensions.