Edward Leigh
Main Page: Edward Leigh (Conservative - Gainsborough)Department Debates - View all Edward Leigh's debates with the Home Office
Citizenship (Armed Forces) Bill
Edward Leigh Excerpts(11 years, 2 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Jonathan Lord (Woking) (Con)
I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
The Bill is brief and to the point—it has just two clauses. It seeks to amend the British Nationality Act 1981 to ensure that foreign and Commonwealth citizens in the forces who wish to apply for naturalisation as a British citizen under section 6(1) are not disadvantaged because of time served overseas. In order to apply for naturalisation as a British citizen under section 6(1), a person must have been resident in the United Kingdom for the previous five years. The Secretary of State has the discretion to disregard time spent outside the United Kingdom during that period, but an applicant must, in all cases, have been in the United Kingdom at the beginning of the period. That means that foreign and Commonwealth citizens in the armed forces who are posted overseas may have to wait longer than those who remain in the United Kingdom.
Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)
I have been trying to understand the Bill. Is the key moment the precise moment at the end of the five years? Is that the law under the 1981 Act? It is unclear to me, and I am sure that my hon. Friend can explain it to the House.
Jonathan Lord
The key point is that under the 1981 Act a foreigner or Commonwealth citizen applying for naturalisation—the pass to British citizenship—has to have been in the UK on the exact date five years prior to making that application. Of course, it is invidious that a foreign or Commonwealth soldier serving Queen and country in our armed forces overseas, perhaps even in a conflict zone, should not be able to make such an application when other soldiers based in the UK or other men and women living in the UK would be able to do so.
Jonathan Lord
My understanding is that it would cover such people, but I look to the Minister to give us a little more clarification on that point. The key thing is that a person will have to be serving in our armed forces to be covered. It is my understanding that Army reservists are very much a part of our armed forces. I have to say, however, that we would be unlikely to find foreign or Commonwealth citizens serving in our reserve forces. They tend to join the full armed forces, rather than the reserves. It is a full-time vocation and a full-time job, and we want to recognise their hard work and dedication.
Sir Edward Leigh
Will my hon. Friend clarify what will happen when the Bill has become an Act? Someone will have to have been a fully fledged member of the armed forces for five years, but it will not matter where they were during the five years before they apply for naturalisation. Will they, at that point, have an automatic right to become a British citizen unless they have misbehaved? I am sure that that is right, but I was unable to find that fact in the Library.
Jonathan Lord
At that point, the person would follow the normal naturalisation process for citizenship. The key point is that a member of the armed services will be able to apply even if they have been posted abroad.
Sir Edward Leigh
I presume, though, that once they have done their five years and applied for naturalisation, they will pretty much have an absolute right to become a British citizen. Has my hon. Friend discussed this interesting point with the Minister?
Jonathan Lord
I have a large amount of notes relating to the naturalisation process and all the disqualifications that could block the path to British citizenship of a member of the armed forces. Factors such as dishonourable discharge and criminality could lead to disqualification, along with all the other kinds of things that one would expect a potential citizen of this country to be judged on, whether they were a soldier or a civilian.
Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)
May I say what a pleasure it is to speak on this calm Friday morning, and what a pleasurable experience it is to see law being made and properly scrutinised? May I also say to my hon. Friend the Member for Woking (Jonathan Lord)—I know that this is his first Parliament—that I thought his speech was outstanding. He took many interventions, and batted them all away very deftly. He has clearly done a huge amount of research. I commend him for what he has done, and also for his choice of Bill.
It is very difficult to get a private Member’s Bill through, and I see nothing wrong with trying to persuade everyone to agree to it before it arrives on the Floor of the House. There is nothing wrong with co-operating with the Government in that sense, or indeed with the Opposition. My hon. Friend’s Bill is a very delicate creature, and it would take very few Members of Parliament to kill it. However, I have no doubt that it will become law, so I say well done to him.
The Bill is important because it is entirely in tune with the armed forces covenant. Although when I was studying it in the Library my first impression was that it was very narrow, I see nothing wrong with that. Private Members' Bills have to be narrow. In fact, this Bill goes to the heart of current public debate: the armed forces are centre stage at present, and the Government have rightly made a great virtue of the armed forces covenant. Any ludicrous bureaucratic mechanism that disadvantages the forces is rightly resented by the Veterans Association. This is a good Bill, and I am sure that it will be an excellent Act.
Mel Stride
My hon. Friend is a learned and long-established Member of Parliament. I wonder whether he will attempt to answer a question that has been niggling away at the back of my mind. It seems to me that the anomaly in the 1981 Act is an absolute absurdity. Why does my hon. Friend think that it occurred in the first place? Was it an unintended consequence of some part of the legislation? Was the aim to achieve something that we have missed here? Or was it simply an oversight that should never have occurred?
Sir Edward Leigh
The short answer is that I do not know, but the Minister is sitting here, and no doubt he does know. What I will say is that although the private Member’s Bill procedure is often criticised, private Members' Bills are in fact scrutinised much more closely than Government Bills. The British Nationality Act was a large and important measure, but I am not a great believer in the conspiracy theory of history. I do not think that anyone in the Home Office wanted to disadvantage the armed forces. I am a believer in the cock-up theory of history, and if my hon. Friend wants my honest opinion, I think that that anomaly was simply a cock-up. Now it is being righted. That is what this procedure is all about.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Woking said, it is not right that the applications of people who put their lives on the line should be refused when the very reason for their absence is that we, the British Government—we, the British people—sent them overseas to protect our country. Why the anomaly arose I do not know, but it seems absurd to me, and that is why I think that the Bill, although narrow, is important.
The Minister has said:
“Making this change was a priority commitment under the Armed Forces Covenant. I am delighted to support this Bill which will ensure service men and women are not disadvantaged.”
So the Minister is on side. As has been mentioned, Veterans Aid is also on side, and put it very well when it said:
“Veterans Aid, more than any other military charity, has championed the cause of Foreign and Commonwealth servicemen and women, disadvantaged, through no fault of their own, by bureaucracy that is demonstrably at odds with the Military Covenant.”
The Army Families Federation has said:
“This legislation will make a big difference to the many soldiers and their spouses who are currently prohibited from applying for Citizenship because they were serving overseas or were on operations at the start the 5-year residential period.”
So this is clearly an important Bill, and it is clearly widely supported.
This Second Reading debate offers us an opportunity to try to tease out more information from the Minister about exactly how many people will be affected, how much further we can go in terms of the military covenant, and how we can improve morale and recruitment. A considerable number of people will potentially be involved. As of 1 April last year, 8,510 of the 166,110 members of the trained UK regular forces were non-British, constituting approximately 5.1% of our nation’s armed forces. That is quite a lot. It would be interesting to hear from the Minister whether he thinks that it is the right number, and what is the Government’s policy on recruitment.
I am not sure that I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope), who intimated earlier that perhaps there were too many foreign nationals serving in our forces. The Minister, who is far more knowledgeable than me, will be able to confirm or correct that, but I suspect that the 5.1% figure is fairly constant. It seems a reasonably healthy percentage, but one would not want it to rise too far. It is important, particularly in times of economic difficulty and high unemployment, for our armed forces to consist overwhelmingly of British citizens.
Of those 8,510 forces, about 520 were Nepalese, and nearly 8,000 were citizens of the Republic of Ireland or Commonwealth countries. About 4.5% of the armed forces intake at the end of 2011 consisted of black and ethnic minority personnel. I may be wrong about this, but according to my research, there are currently no statistics stating how many non-British members of the UK regular forces currently desire to gain British citizenship. I suspect that the number is relatively low. My hon. Friend the Member for Woking mentioned a figure, but I do not know where he found it. Even if the number who will be affected is only in the low hundreds, I do not think that that necessarily means that the Bill is unimportant. It is the principle, rather than the number involved, that is important.
Guy Opperman
Is there not a distinction between the total number of overseas personnel in the armed forces and the number who are affected by the anomaly of the five-year rule, which by any standard is a much smaller number?
Sir Edward Leigh
Of course. That is an obvious point.
I should like to hear a bit more from the Minister about the armed forces covenant. The covenant states that the Government’s aspiration is that no armed forces personnel be disadvantaged in “dealings with wider society”. Those are the Government’s words, and I think that they are rather vague, but they could extend to applications for British citizenship. Clearly, what we are doing today is entirely in accord with the covenant. Although the issue with which we are dealing is important, it covers quite a small area. What do the Government mean when they say that armed forces personnel should not be disadvantaged in “dealings with wider society”?
The covenant also refers to the Government aim of removing any social or economic inequalities between them and other citizens. It would be interesting to hear from the Minister whether there are any other bureaucratic anomalies in regard to either recruitment or citizenship which still need to be addressed under the armed forces covenant. I suspect that what we are doing today will not be enough for the Veterans Association. It will be happy with it—indeed, it has already welcomed the Bill—but it will, quite rightly, ask for more.
What is the Government’s aim? What obstacles do they feel that they should remove in order to get rid of any inequalities between our armed forces and other citizens? I also wonder whether the aim of the Bill is undermined by the fact that the families of members of the armed forces would have to apply for naturalisation via the normal and potentially lengthy methods. I have tried to study that, and my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch asked a good question about it earlier. We want to know how far this will extend. What exactly are we talking about, therefore?
Mention was made of cleaners. Those who clean also serve their country. Families are very important, too. My point is that the armed forces community is just as important as armed forces personnel. Does this anomaly not ignore the Government’s commitments in the covenant to the armed forces community, rather than simply to armed forces personnel? The Minister has many questions to answer, but he is a very capable Minister so I am sure he will address them comprehensively.
The levels of support available in the covenant to the families of armed forces personnel extend to
“positive measures to prevent disadvantage.”
What exactly does that mean? What further proposals will the Government make? As my hon. Friend the Member for Central Devon (Mel Stride) said, our armed forces are paid well but not over-paid and their accommodation is good but in some cases it is not over-good, and there are many other areas where our armed forces feel they are disadvantaged.
Families of non-British service personnel can be based overseas, potentially causing problems in their desire for UK citizenship. The Gurkhas, for instance, have bases in Nepal and Brunei. There are, however, already institutions such as the Gurkha settlement office which provide positive support for individuals wishing to apply for a visa or indefinite leave to remain in the UK. The existence of those institutions could be interpreted as fulfilling the Government’s commitment to minimise the impacts of such irritants on military life, but I suspect there are many irritants for our armed forces personnel which the Government still need to address. The measures we are addressing this morning are only a very small part of that.
Guy Opperman
I appreciate entirely the point my hon. Friend is making, but the implementation of the armed forces covenant is an ongoing process addressing many different aspects. The armed forces covenant annual report, a copy of which I am holding, is some hundred pages long and addresses a multitude of different issues, of which this is, I accept, a solitary one. Does my hon. Friend agree that there is a process of slow, incremental progress on a number of issues?
Sir Edward Leigh
Of course. We all know that the task facing the Minister is extremely difficult and it is better to make a small step than no step at all, but I think the question still needs to be asked. What we are talking about today is just getting rid of one very small little irritant. You are the expert on order, Mr Speaker, and I am not an expert on it, but it seems to me that this Second Reading debate gives us an opportunity to get more out of the Government on how they are trying to increase recruitment and other interesting issues. On other days, there is often not time to get adequate answers.
Let us talk about the British Nationality Act 1981.
Mel Stride
I thank my hon. Friend for giving way and for his very gracious and, if I may say so, rather perceptive remark. Does not the fact that the anomaly that we are addressing today has now come to the Floor of the House, raised in a private Member’s Bill by my hon. Friend the Member for Woking (Jonathan Lord), mean that it has ceased to be a small matter? Instead it has become rather totemic, which is all the more reason why we should make sure the Bill has a safe passage through this House.
Sir Edward Leigh
On Friday mornings, Members of Parliament naturally have many other things to do in their constituencies and we therefore all accept that the Chamber is not swarming with Members, but there are many people outside watching this debate on television, including many in the armed forces, and they will see this as totemic and they will be looking at Members of Parliament doing their best to try to get rid of the little irritants of service life one by one. I therefore think what we are doing today is important and should not be underestimated.
I was in the House during the passage of the 1981 Act, but I do not have any close recollection of its passage; after all, there have been so many Acts of Parliament over the years. Clearly, however, something went wrong with it in respect of the issue we are addressing. It specifies certain residence requirements for naturalisation for British citizenship. It states that one requirement is that the applicant
“was in the United Kingdom at the beginning of the period of five years ending with the date of the application”.
That would seem to be entirely sensible.
Can the Minister also explain the thinking behind other requirements? My hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope) mentioned one of his constituents who was married to an English person and has been disadvantaged by this Act. It is not only service personnel who are disadvantaged. Will the Minister take this opportunity to explain the thinking behind this provision and others?
The Act also specifies the number of days the applicant is allowed to be absent during the five-year qualifying period. The Act gives the Secretary of State the power to waive some of the residence requirements if there are “special circumstances”, however. This discretion is applied in applications involving non-British members of the armed forces. Time spent serving in the UK or overseas can count towards the qualifying residence period. However, it does not permit the Secretary of State to waive the requirement to be physically present in the UK on the first day of the qualifying period ending with the date of the application. One must assume that, contrary to what my hon. Friend the Member for Central Devon said, there was some rationale behind that. Given that the Secretary of State appears to have quite wide discretion, I am interested to know why no discretion was given in this particular case.
Harriett Baldwin
As my hon. Friend was in the House when the 1981 Act was passed, can he remember the territorial extent of that legislation? I ask that because I am a little confused as the territorial extent covered under the Bill includes the British overseas territories, which would potentially mean someone living in the overseas territories could apply for UK citizenship from their location.
Sir Edward Leigh
You, Mr Speaker, must have immediately spotted this: I am sorry, but I misspoke as my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch and I only arrived in the House in 1983. We have been here so long, and sometimes old men forget. We are not responsible for this Act, therefore, so that question will have to go to the Minister, and I am very happy to pass it on to him.
Sir Edward Leigh
The Bill’s promoter is unavoidably absent from the Chamber for a few moments, but he will have to answer that question. My understanding, however, is that the answer is yes. We are creating a special dispensation today because we say, “Surely if someone has served their country for five years, they should not be disadvantaged in getting British citizenship just because they have been serving in Afghanistan or elsewhere.” That may be a controversial statement but what greater qualification is there to become a citizen of a country than to have served that country?
All armies in history have done that. The quickest and best way to become a citizen of the Roman empire was to join a Roman legion, and there was very good thinking behind that. I do not think we should be in a different position, but, again, this is for the Minister to answer. I am still not clear, however, not only about exactly how many people will be involved, but whether, if this Bill becomes law and the 1981 Act is still in place, someone who has joined the armed forces, behaved well and served for five years but has never set foot in this country will pretty well have an automatic right to become a British citizen. They will have to go through the normal processes, of course, but is that the thinking? I am not sure whether I have had an answer to that yet. I know some people watching this debate may not agree with that, but I just ask the question—I am not sure I have an answer myself. Are we now moving to a situation where someone who joins the British forces, serves overseas all that time and never sets foot in this country can become British citizen? Will the Minister please make a particular note of that question and answer it.
I ask that because the 1981 Act requires that
“on the date of the application he is serving outside the United Kingdom in Crown service”.
No minimum period of service is specified, nor is there any requirement to be present in the UK at any particular time. However, those who are not overseas or not still in service at the time of applying for naturalisation cannot benefit from the provision. These are all technical but important points.
The provisions made in the 1981 Act are, however, used sparingly, as we know. Home Office guidance sets out that criteria such as rank and quality of service should be considered when assessing applications. Quality of service is of key importance in the assessment, with applications that do not satisfy on that ground being unlikely to be accepted, regardless of whether they satisfy statutory requirements.
The amendments made by the Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Act 2009 give the Secretary of State discretion to waive all residential requirements where
“a particular case…is an armed forces case”,
where the applicant was a member of the armed forces on the date of the application. That does not, however, cater for individuals who have left the armed forces. I have said enough to reveal that these are complex legal areas that need to be tidied up.
Before I sit down, I wish to make a more general point about the armed forces, a subject in which I take a great interest as chairman of the Conservative party’s Back-Bench defence and foreign affairs committee. I hope that you will forgive me, Mr Speaker, if I use this opportunity to say that I am worried about the number of personnel in our armed forces and what is happening to our armed forces. I am now ranging a bit wide of the narrow point we are discussing. It has been a turbulent time in the Ministry of Defence, with a report due on the Defence Reform Bill at the end of October. A budget cut of 1.9% for 2015 will add to the large-scale cuts that have already been taking place, including recent reductions in the number of senior military officers. Many critics have voiced fears that such reductions could leave the UK with a smaller than adequate armed service.
Mr Speaker
Order. This is exceptionally cheeky on the part of the hon. Gentleman, and I feel sure, given the puckish grin on his face, that he is entirely conscious of the fact. If he wishes to air his concerns on this matter, he needs constantly to bear in mind the word “recruitment”.
Sir Edward Leigh
I know I was being cheeky, Mr Speaker, but I could not resist the opportunity to try to expound on what is happening to our armed forces. I will not say any more about total defence spending, but, on personnel, I will make the following point. As of 2012, there were 750 non-UK citizens serving in the Royal Navy, which is relatively few of the 33,190 trained personnel; 7,640 non-UK citizens were serving in the Army, out of a total of 94,000 trained personnel; and only 120 non-UK citizens were serving in the Royal Air Force, which is a very small proportion of the 38,000. Intake of black and minority ethnic personnel at the higher levels of the UK regular forces is incredibly low, with only 20 officers joining in 2011 out of a total of 1,070. In the context of the wider armed forces debate, this is an opportunity for the Minister to talk about recruitment and his policy on attracting—or not attracting—people from Commonwealth countries to join the armed forces.
I also hope that the Minister will say a bit about that context and how the Bill will affect the immigration debate in total. I suspect that that is what lay behind the interventions made by my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch. Granting of UK citizenship in the year ending June 2013 was at a five-year high, with 204,541 applications having been accepted, with the figure having risen steadily to an average of an extra 7,000 successful applications a year. I know that the Minister cannot give too wide a discourse on the whole immigration debate, but it is important that we reassure people watching this debate that we are very conscious of not only the need to remove discrimination against the armed forces, but the wider immigration debate in this country. There has to be a balance.
Mr Chope
Will my hon. Friend comment on the concern, which I certainly have, that one of the perverse consequence of this legislation might be to encourage the armed forces to do more overseas and foreign recruiting, rather than concentrating on trying to recruit at home? We know that it is difficult to recruit reservists at the moment—the Government are hard up against the issue of how they will meet the target on reservists—but it seems that this could be an agenda whereby we will fill our armed forces with people from overseas instead of from our own country.
Sir Edward Leigh
As is often the case, my hon. Friend makes an intervention that just needs to be answered; we do need to reassure people. We value tremendously the men and women who are not UK citizens but who serve in our armed forces, with the Gurkhas being the most famous case, but he is making a fair point. I hope that the Minister will reassure my hon. Friend, me and those watching this debate that nothing in the Bill encompasses an attitude of, “It is difficult to recruit here in the UK and therefore the proportion of non-UK citizens serving in our armed forces is going to have to rise.” I suspect that my constituents would not necessarily welcome such a position. That is not to make any criticism of those serving or to disagree in any way, shape or form about the huge sacrifices made in the past century—mention has been made of the first world war—but I know that the Minister will understand the point being made in that intervention and will want to reply to it.
Let us leave aside those wider worries about the level of recruitment in the armed forces and the wider debate about concerns about the level of immigration into this country. The year ending June 2013 did see a 14% rise in the number of non-British persons granted citizenship compared with the same period for the previous year.
Harriett Baldwin
Does my hon. Friend think it would be appropriate, when targeting net migration to this country, for the Government to make it clear how many of those who do come here are former members of our armed forces?
Sir Edward Leigh
That is a good point, and I think I may end on it, as it allows me to sum up what I have been trying to say. There is concern about immigration into this country, but I am sure that the Minister can reassure us that the numbers we are talking about in this Bill are very small. Not only that, but the people involved have served our country and they are at a unique disadvantage. This modest but correct Bill will deal with that disadvantage, so I join my hon. Friend the Member for Woking in commending it to the House.
Harriett Baldwin
My hon. Friend gives an excellent example of why he is so well placed to introduce the Bill. It demonstrates that he understands all the things that we as British citizens consider appropriate ways in which to demonstrate that we understand what it means to be British. If Mr Speaker will bear with me one moment, I shall give an example of the sort of question that used to be in the test, which I do not think was appropriate: how many days in any given year must a school legally be required to be open? Suggested answers are 150 days, 170 days, 190 days and 200 days. Again, I will take interventions from any colleagues who feel confident that they know the answer to that question.
My hon. Friend is right. In bestowing on people the highest gift of citizenship that anyone can have bestowed upon them, which is British citizenship, we want successful individuals to be able to demonstrate that they understand the quintessence of what it means to be British.
Sir Edward Leigh
This is all rather absurd. Can one imagine such a situation when the Emperor Claudius allowed Roman legionnaires to become Roman citizens? There they were, spending five years fighting barbarians on the German frontier, and then they would be required to come back and answer questions about how many days there were in the qualification to become a tribune. All those obscure questions about the constitution are ridiculous. If someone has served their country for five years, surely that is qualification enough, without having to answer absurd questions.
Harriett Baldwin
Perhaps I am about to introduce a note of dissent into our discussions this morning. I think that when we bestow on people that highest honour of citizenship, British citizenship, we expect those who are so proud to take on our citizenship to understand aspects of our history and culture, and to understand the long and distinguished history of our armed forces, for example. That is why I welcome the fact that the citizenship test that this Government have introduced covers much more of the history, the culture and the spirit of democracy that we have in this country, rather than esoteric questions such as from which two places one can obtain advice if one has a problem at work. The possible answers are the national Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service—
The Minister for Immigration (Mr Mark Harper)
It is a great pleasure to see you in the Chair, Madam Deputy Speaker. I had prepared only a brief speech, but the debate has been so wide-ranging, and Members on both sides of the House—including the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Diana Johnson)—have asked such complex questions, that I fear that I may need to draw on some more material.
The Government’s support for the Bill will not come as a surprise to my hon. Friend the Member for Woking (Jonathan Lord), because he quoted my remarks earlier. I am grateful to him for presenting it. I had forgotten, until I was prompted by my hon. Friend the Member for Central Devon (Mel Stride), that this was his second private Member’s Bill in what has so far been a short, but I know will be a very long, parliamentary career. He has been rather more successful in the ballot than I have been during my time in the House, and he has used his opportunities well. I know that his first Bill was very good, and I hope that this one reaches the statute book as well. I am also grateful to those who have supported the Bill.
My hon. Friend said that part of his reason for presenting the Bill was the fact that the Pirbright establishment was in his constituency and was important to a number of his constituents. The 1st Battalion the Rifles is based at Beachley barracks, on the southern tip of my constituency, and I have spent a great deal of time supporting it. I was privileged to be invited to join members of the battalion for their pre-deployment, before they embarked on their first tour of duty in Afghanistan in 2009. I was fortunate enough also to join them—all too briefly—in theatre to observe their operations. The battalion contains a number of foreign and Commonwealth members, and I have provided many of them with advice on immigration matters in my capacity as their constituency Member of Parliament. I know this measure will be welcome, and I hope it will benefit one or two of them as well.
I also draw on my own experience from the last Parliament when I was a shadow Defence Minister and I had the opportunity to visit a number of armed forces establishments and meet many people who serve in our armed forces. From that, I know what a great contribution they make to our country both here and overseas. It is right to acknowledge that some Members of this House have served in our armed forces, including the Whip who is present, my hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes North (Mark Lancaster). This matter is just one small part of the armed forces covenant and the process we are undertaking, which I think is very valuable.
I will not talk about the covenant at length, as I know that would test your patience, Madam Deputy Speaker, but I want to refer to it briefly. My hon. Friend the Member for Stourbridge (Margot James) drew attention to the fact—indeed, it was a public service announcement—that each year we publish a thorough report that is available in the Library. That report sets out very comprehensively the purpose of the covenant with a foreword by the Secretary of State, and it also sets out a range of measures we have taken across Government policy to deliver benefits and to remove discrimination in respect of serving personnel.
I also want to refer to the embedding of the work we do with external groups as part of that process. There is a covenant reference group, the successor to the original external reference group. It includes service charities and those very knowledgeable about these areas. I recently had the opportunity to attend a meeting of the ministerial committee looking at these matters and the covenant reference group. It was held at No. 10 Downing street and the Prime Minister attended for a period. That close working between Government and the service charities means we have been able to deliver on these achievements, and it is one reason why this measure is supported by a number of organisations and not, as far as we know, opposed by any.
Veterans Aid says:
“We warmly welcome any initiative that removes obstacles to those who have served this country with honour from settling here legally and have campaigned on this issue. Veterans Aid, more than any other military charity, has championed the cause of Foreign & Commonwealth servicemen and women disadvantaged, through no fault of their own, by bureaucracy…This was an injustice and we applaud the Government for listening.”
I am grateful for those generous words. I worked with Veterans Aid when I was a shadow Minister and it is good that it has welcomed this move. The Army Families Federation has also welcomed it and fully supports the changes.
I should say at this point that I am grateful to the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North for two things. First, she put on record her party’s support for the work our armed forces do. That is a good cross-party acknowledgment which we can never hear too often. Secondly, she formally put on record the official Opposition’s support for this private Member’s Bill, which I hope means it has a relatively smooth passage through this House and the other place. You were not in the Chamber earlier, Madam Deputy Speaker, but my hon. Friend the Member for West Worcestershire (Harriett Baldwin) referred to the citizenship test and I am very pleased to say that she passed one bit by being able to confirm that she knew there were two Houses of this Parliament. Once the Bill is finished in this one, it will wing its way to the other House, where I hope it will be as successfully endorsed and can then reach the statute book.
We had a wide-ranging discussion on the citizenship test, Madam Deputy Speaker, and you will be delighted to know—as I am sure Mr Speaker would be if he were here—that although I have a copy of the guide containing all the material used for the citizenship test, I left it in my office so I will not be tempted to draw on it at length or, indeed, at all. My hon. Friend brought her copy with her, however, so she was not as disadvantaged as I am. I know that she did slightly test the patience of Mr Speaker, but he clearly was not upset with her, as he then referred to her “racy and intoxicating” speech. I have never made one of those in this House, and the Whip is probably hoping that I never do so. However, her speech was very welcome, and I am grateful for not only her support, but that of colleagues.
A number of hon. Members raised important points about the Bill, and I wish to deal with a couple of them. First, however, I should say that my hon. Friend the Member for Woking was supported formally in his Bill by my hon. Friends the Members for Bedford (Richard Fuller), for Keighley (Kris Hopkins) and for Mole Valley (Sir Paul Beresford), who appended their names to it. It is worth saying that they are fully in support of it. For the benefit of colleagues in the House, the Home Office sought the permission of my hon. Friend the Member for Woking to prepare some explanatory notes, which he gave. I hope that the notes are helpful, and I know that a number of hon. Members have drawn on them today.
The explanatory notes briefly set out the purpose of the Bill and the fact that it amends the 1981 Act. Although I was not intending to go through this at length, my hon. Friends the Members for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) and for Christchurch (Mr Chope) both asked for a little more detail about how the naturalisation rules work and whether they are automatic or otherwise. The notes deal with that, but I will take the opportunity to discuss it, although not at enormous length, because I know that that would test your patience, Madam Deputy Speaker. I will just set out for the House what the requirements are and how the Secretary of State uses her discretion, to the extent that she has it.
Foreign and Commonwealth personnel in Her Majesty’s armed forces generally apply to naturalise under section 6(1) of the 1981 Act, and they have to meet the following requirements: five years’ residence in the UK; be aged 18 or over; and be of sound mind, a point to which my hon. Friend the Member for West Worcestershire referred. My understanding is that the reference to “sound mind” in this context simply means that the person has the mental capacity to complete the application for naturalisation. I can reassure her that where a former member of the armed forces has a mental health problem, such as post-traumatic stress disorder, whether as a result of their service or otherwise, that would not prevent them from successfully applying for and securing naturalisation if they met the other rules. She rightly says that both in the armed forces and outside we have moved on in our understanding of such mental health conditions, and I am pleased to say that we do not, in any way, discriminate against people, be it deliberately or inadvertently, in this matter.
Applicants must also intend to continue to live in the UK, or to continue in Crown service, the service of an international organisation of which the UK is a member, or the service of a company or association established in the UK. That will be relevant when I go on to talk about the overseas territories, to which my hon. Friend referred. Applicants must also be able to communicate in English, Welsh or Scottish Gaelic—I heard lots of sedentary interventions from Opposition Members when that was mentioned and, although I cannot speak it, I try to pronounce it correctly. Applicants should also have sufficient knowledge of life in the UK and, importantly, be of good character.
I will not go through the residence requirements in enormous detail, but they are broadly that the person has been resident in the United Kingdom for at least five years; has been present in the UK five years before the date of application—that is, of course, where we run into the problem; and is free of immigration time restrictions on the date of application.
Foreign and Commonwealth personnel in Her Majesty’s armed forces are exempt from immigration while they are serving, which means they automatically meet the requirement to be in the UK without a time limit attached to their stay. The Secretary of State already has the discretion to overlook absences, and there are things in the rules that say for how many months someone is allowed to be outside the UK. She generally exercises her discretion in armed forces cases where the absence is caused by service overseas.
Therefore, foreign and Commonwealth personnel in the forces are eligible to naturalise as British citizens after they have served for five years. Alternatively, under the immigration rules, they might qualify for settlement—indefinite leave to remain—on discharge, after four years’ service. They cannot obtain settlement in service because someone who holds indefinite leave to remain is subject to immigration control. If the person opts to be discharged and settles in the UK after four years’ service, they can apply to naturalise after they have held ILTR for one year, thus fulfilling the five-year residence requirement and the requirement not to have a time limit attached to their stay.
My hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough referred to family members. Partners of members of the forces can qualify for naturalisation in their own right or as the spouse of someone naturalised. They have to meet the same requirements of residence and good character, but they are subject to immigration control, so they cannot meet the requirement not to have a time limit to their stay until they have obtained settlement, and it takes the partner of a service person four or five years to obtain settlement.
Sir Edward Leigh
What does “settlement” mean? Say someone is married to a member of the armed forces and has been overseas most of the time. Their partner’s clock is ticking, but what is happening to their clock? Do they have to come back and gain settlement? I am sorry, but I do not quite understand how it works.
Mr Harper
The rules operate differently for the spouse. When serving, the service person is not subject to any immigration restrictions, so they could get naturalisation more quickly. Once they have been naturalised, that opens up some opportunities for their family member.
New section 4C of the 1981 Act, introduced in January 2010, enables a child born to a member of the armed forces serving overseas on an operational posting who would have been born in the UK but for that posting to register as a British citizen on application. Children may also register as British citizens if a parent is naturalised or settles in the UK.
The hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North referred to a specific case. Obviously, I would not go into a specific case in the House, and I do not have all the details to hand either. As a general rule, there is provision in the immigration system, outside the immigration rules, for people to make an application for leave to remain on compassionate grounds. The Secretary of State and I have the ability to allow that. Clearly, we would not set out the details, but look at the application in the round, but we can grant that if the case is sufficiently compelling.
On the hon. Lady’s general point about testing the Secretary of State’s discretion, all the Secretary of State’s decisions in such matters are of course subject to judicial review. Although we do not use the powers frequently—that would drive a coach and horses through the rules—even during my time as Minister for Immigration we have allowed people to visit the United Kingdom on compassionate grounds when they would not normally have met the rules.
It is helpful to be able to operate with such discretion, which is of course the purpose of the Bill. The requirement for an applicant to have been in the United Kingdom at the start of the five-year period is unwaivable, and the Secretary of State cannot waive it however compelling the case. That is the benefit of putting the Bill on the statute book.
It is worth saying that there is already a provision, of which Members may not be aware, to waive that requirement in Crown service cases, but it applies only to those who are still in service and overseas when they apply. The Bill will enable the requirement to be waived for members and former members of the armed forces who have been discharged and have then applied for naturalisation or who have returned to the UK.