Citizenship (Armed Forces) Bill
Debate between Jonathan Lord and Mark Harper(11 years, 2 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Jonathan Lord
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for bringing us back to the key point of the Bill with a good local example of how it will work.
The Minister for Immigration (Mr Mark Harper)
I should like to assist the House on the point raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh). I ask him to hold on to the thought about naturalisation requirements, because I shall touch on them in my remarks at the end of the debate. I shall clarify how the current rules work, and how we expect them to work in the future. I hope that that will be helpful.
Jonathan Lord
Perhaps my intervention will pre-empt a further one. My hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope) is interested in, and perhaps even concerned about, the retrospective element of the Bill. However, I should point out to him that, by the Bill’s nature, the time elapsed will mean that the people affected— whether they live in the UK, are in the armed services or are in Crown service and wish to naturalise as British citizens and live in the UK—will already have qualified. In that sense, there are no great numbers waiting for any retrospective aspect of the Bill. They will already qualify. I hope that that point is helpful.
Mr Harper
It is helpful. Before I give way to my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch, it is worth saying that the disadvantage suffered by members of the armed forces under the existing legal position did not mean that they could not seek naturalisation. The disadvantage was that they had to wait longer than someone who was not serving overseas.
To the extent that the disadvantage they suffered was a delay in seeking naturalisation, my hon. Friend is right that the people who suffered from that disadvantage in the past will almost certainly have been in a position to seek naturalisation since.