Non-UK Armed Forces Personnel: Immigration Requirements

Dave Doogan Excerpts

Wednesday 5th January 2022 Westminster Hall

[Dave Doogan (Angus) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. I thank the hon. and gallant Member for Barnsley Central (Dan Jarvis) for securing this important debate—would that we did not have to debate the issue, however.

Commonwealth personnel have for decades fulfilled a vital role in the UK armed forces and have ensured that skills are maintained across the board. It is therefore disappointing to be once again debating immigration issues relating to these personnel that should have been dealt with years ago, and most certainly could have been dealt with during the passage of the Armed Forces Act 2021 or the Nationality and Borders Bill. Hon. Members from across the House repeatedly raise this issue, on account of its status as a national disgrace, and this Government repeatedly fail to act. On the one hand, Ministers talk up the importance of our personnel, but on the other, they create a hierarchy within our veteran community.

It is, frankly, scandalous to ask people to put their life on the line to serve the United Kingdom, and then to charge them thousands of pounds for the right to live in the state that they defended. Their families pay a high price, too, as the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) pointed out, and many find themselves living apart from their loved ones and partners. We should do everything that we can to ensure that families are held together and supported; instead, we find the Government separating members of the armed forces from their families and then hitting them with exorbitant visa fees.

Commonwealth personnel are vital in all three services, and are increasingly important because of the serious issues with recruitment in the United Kingdom. The Defence Committee noted that the Government’s 10-year partnership with Capita has been “abysmal since it started”, and that Capita has

“failed to meet the Army’s recruitment targets every single year of the contract”.

The Army has embarked on further recruitment campaigns across the Commonwealth to ensure we have the minimum troop numbers required to properly defend the state. Commonwealth citizens who have stepped forward to fill the gaps deserve to be rewarded, not penalised, but it seems as though the UK Government would prefer to do the latter.

The Government must seriously reconsider the income requirements for Commonwealth serving personnel who wish to have their family join them in the United Kingdom. The minimum income requirement is currently £18,600 for a spouse, and an additional £3,800 for a first child and £2,400 for children thereafter. That is not reasonable or realistic today, and the role of the Gurkhas and other Commonwealth serving personnel over the decades, and during the first and second world wars, shows that this is a historical scandal as well.

If families meet the minimum income requirement, they are then hit with visa application fees, which have more than doubled in the last five years to £2,389 per person. We are talking about nearly £10,000 for a family of four. As the hon. Member for Leyton and Wanstead (John Cryer) said, this is a curious type of gratitude for the UK to dish out. The UK Government are also on the wrong side of the Royal British Legion and Poppyscotland on this matter, which is really not a good look.

In addition, the families left behind by Commonwealth personnel serving in the UK can be severely affected. My hon. Friend the Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey (Drew Hendry) recently mounted a campaign for his constituent Denis Omondi, a British citizen serving in the Army. His daughter, living in Kenya, was denied a visa, despite him having uncontested custody, to come and live with him in the United Kingdom. Thankfully, because of my hon. Friend’s campaign, the Home Office made a U-turn on that decision, but these cases are not unique.

Exemption from UK immigration control ends when the person is discharged from the armed forces. They have only 28 days from then to apply to remain in the UK, if they have not already done so. That relies on the person overseeing the discharge process having knowledge of the immigration rules and communicating it clearly and effectively. Unfortunately, as we know, that does not always happen.

The woeful example of the Fijian military, which other Members have mentioned, highlights that very clearly.

After independence, Scotland will, like many countries, engage in attracting talent from abroad to help populate our armed forces and other key public services. However, unlike the UK, Scotland’s esteem for service personnel from abroad will not end with their signing, only to be replaced with a hostile environment and a £10,000 bill to continue living in Scotland at the end of their service.

The SNP has been clear that after three years of full-time service, non-UK citizens who have served in the armed forces should be recognised with an automatic right to citizenship. As set out in our 2019 manifesto, the UK Government must remove the visa fees for Commonwealth armed forces personnel and their immediate families when applying for indefinite leave to remain.

In closing, will the Minister afford the Ministry of Defence sufficient latitude to fix these problems, right these wrongs and restore some justice to this process, or will we be back here, debating this again, in 12 months’ time?