Armed Forces Bill

Lord Alton of Liverpool Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 23rd November 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Craig of Radley (CB)]

My Lords, I support the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay of Clashfern, on Amendment 4, and I support his Amendment 17. He has brought to your Lordships’ attention an example of where due regard is necessary from the Secretary of State. When he did so in Committee, I said that I had another one, and I would like to take the opportunity to spell that out, because this cannot be devolved or left to local authorities to be dealt with.

Some servicemen recruited in Hong Kong were full members of Her Majesty’s Armed Forces, having taken the oath of allegiance and paid full UK taxes on their pay. They held British passports; some trained in this country or elsewhere to fit them for their role in Hong Kong; some were involved in jungle-style warfare training in Borneo; one large unit was sent to Cyprus to release further UK armed personnel for Operation Granby, the first Gulf War in 1991. Many in the Royal Navy Hong Kong Squadron served worldwide on Her Majesty’s ships. Now retired, they are still rightly classified as UK veterans and deserve fair treatment under the military covenant. But a few who served in those units that disbanded in 1997 missed out when allocations to retain their British citizenship were made in 1984. Some but not all of these servicemen were indeed allowed to retain their British passports and citizenships. Those that were missed out and overlooked have long been campaigning for a return of this right, which has been replaced by BN(O) status without the benefit of full British citizenship. This injustice occurred when they were still serving.

Their case was first raised in this House in 1986, over 35 years ago. It has been recommended by the Hong Kong LegCo and was strongly supported by Lord MacLehose, drawing on his long and distinguished tour as governor of Hong Kong from 1971 to 1972. The Minister who wound up that debate about Hong Kong replied:

“I hope that your Lordships will recognise that there are some complex issues to be considered here … But, again, I can assure your Lordships that we shall give this the most careful consideration.”—[Official Report, 20/1/1986; col. 102.]


Note that promise of careful consideration. Nothing happened. Nothing further was said or done. Regrettably, repeated assurance of careful, active consideration by the Home Office to this day still produces no decision. Surely these few veterans deserve better—a definitive answer, not just prevarication and stalling behind a misleading false promise of active consideration. How many more years of consideration do the Government require? Are the Home Office hoping that when the veterans are all dead the problem will be forgotten?

Following the enactment of the convenant in 2011, a small association, of which I am privileged to be honorary patron, was formed by some former members of the Hong Kong Military Service Corps to press their case again. I myself have repeatedly raised it in debates and Questions for Written Answer and written to the Prime Minister to support representations by those affected in Hong Kong. I am far from alone. Over the past nine years or more, many Members of both Houses have approached Ministers, Home Secretaries and Prime Ministers on behalf of these veterans, but over the past decade the response has been increasingly incredible and ridiculous—that is, that it is under active consideration.

Over 18 months ago, at their request, I forwarded 64 individual applications from those Military Service Corps veterans to the Home Secretary. None has been answered. There has not even been an acknowledgment from the Home Office. Understandably, the present situation in Hong Kong has strengthened the wish for this matter to be resolved and for those now few remaining individuals to be treated as full citizens. Will this Government at last do the right thing for these veterans?

Surely this is a further extreme example of the reason for a duty of care and due regard to be placed in statute on the Secretary of State. I am sure in future other issues affecting a group of veterans, not just individuals, will arise, which cannot be dealt with at devolved or local authority level. The Royal British Legion and other service charities have provided cogent arguments why it is not right to exclude central government from a statutory duty of due regard for veterans. I endorse that view based on their detailed and dedicated experience helping the veteran community. I strongly support this amendment.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, I am very pleased to support Amendment 4, in the names of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay of Clashfern, the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Newnham, and my friend the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Craig of Radley. As the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay, told us, his amendment gives us the opportunity to address specific injustices experienced by our ex-servicemen and he is absolutely right in telling us that the lead on this should not be local authorities but national government. That is why not only are we right to hang specific cases on this amendment, but the purpose of the amendment itself is also clear and right.

Over the past decade, my noble and gallant friend and I have knocked on the doors of Ministers and raised questions on behalf of Hong Kong veterans. I know how greatly he is admired and respected by that cohort for his dedication and commitment to their cause. We have also worked with Mr Andrew Rosindell, the Member of Parliament for Romford, who has put great energy into putting right what is a clear injustice. The treatment of Hong Kong ex-servicemen has not been commensurate with the Armed Forces covenant, and the noble and learned Lord and others are seeking to put it right.

I also pay tribute to Roger Ching, the chairperson of the HKOR Benevolent Association, and who says of the treatment of Hong Kong’s ex-servicemen that

“The attitude of successive Governments towards servicemen and women and veterans is appalling.”


In 2014, my noble and gallant friend and I met with the late James Brokenshire when he was a Home Office Minister. He was characteristically courteous, but neither he nor a series of successive Home Secretaries have been able to correct the signal injustice faced by Hong Kong’s ex-servicemen.

It is worth recalling that, from 1857 until 1997, more than 40,000 Hong Kong men lost their lives protecting our interests and the interests of the Crown. In the Great War, 100,000 British-Chinese soldiers served on the Western Front, and by the time of the Armistice the Chinese Labour Corps numbered nearly 96,000 men. In subsequent conflicts, they served alongside British servicemen: in the Second World War, in Korea, in the Malayan anti-communist campaigns and elsewhere, as the noble and gallant Lord has told us. In this month of all months, we should not only honour that contribution but do something practical to show that with memory of past sacrifice comes contemporary engagement with a long-running failure to honour the past.

In July 2006, the United Kingdom granted full British citizenship to all British Gurkha soldiers and their dependants who had served in Hong Kong. It was a generous and good decision. But why has there been such a different treatment for all but a handful of Hong Kong veterans? When Hong Kong was handed back to the Chinese Communist Party in 1997, a points- based system meant that only 159 of the 654 soldiers who applied to live in the United Kingdom were successful.

Campaigners responded to that clear injustice, and one group, 38 Degrees, even set up a petition which gathered more than 117,000 signatures. Yet the response since right of abode was set up in 1997 has failed to bring a settlement, with successive Home Secretaries repeating the mantra of which my noble and gallant friend has reminded us this afternoon: that the applications are “under consideration”. For how much longer are we to be given this unsatisfactory, stalling response?

Last year, Rosie Laydon, a presenter and reporter for Forces TV, was in touch with me. She said:

“British Hong Kong veterans do not feel the current Government offer of visas to those with BNO status offers adequate recognition of their service. They have told me that they believe they should be granted British citizenship unconditionally”—


and I agree. They also told her that, as former members of the British Armed Forces, under Chinese national security laws, now imposed on Hong Kong, they are liable to be charged with spying for the United Kingdom Government.

Here I should declare that I am a patron of Hong Kong Watch, a vice-chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Hong Kong and sanctioned, along with the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy of The Shaws, by the CCP after taking part, in my case, in an international team monitoring the district council elections in 2019. Since then, we have seen the enactment of the CCP’s draconian national security law, and I should like to hear from the Minister, for whom I have enormous respect, as she knows, what assessment she has made of the implications of loyal service to the Crown for the safety of our ex-servicemen in Hong Kong. We need to see this matter is a question of honour, but we also need to see it as a question of safety and security.

Recently, the noble Lord, Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon, told me in a Parliamentary Answer:

“The National Security Law is being used to systematically stifle rights and freedoms, not protect public security.”


He also wrote:

“The UK is deeply concerned about the situation in Hong Kong and the systematic erosion of rights and freedoms and the high degree of autonomy enshrined in the Sino-British Joint Declaration.”


Perhaps when the Minister replies, she can tell us when the United Kingdom is going to do anything more to hold the People’s Republic of China to account for the destruction of the basic freedoms of Hong Kong.

Meanwhile, I point out to your Lordships’ House that the Times has reported that the Foreign Secretary, Liz Truss, says that the CCP is “committing genocide” in Xinjiang—something that the House will return to on Thursday. In the context of Xinjiang, Tibet and Taiwan, I may add that there have been more than 150 sorties trying to intimidate Taiwan in the course of just five days. In Xinjiang, we have heard the United States Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, say that

“the forcing of men, women and children into concentration camps”—

his words—

“trying to, in effect, re-educate them to be adherents to the ideology of the Chinese Communist Party, all of that speaks to an effort to commit genocide.”

Is it any wonder, then, that loyal servants of the Crown fear for the consequences of being abandoned in Hong Kong? The CCP has imprisoned lawyers, dissenters, pastors and journalists, such as the young woman, Zhang Zhan, tortured and jailed for four years for shining a light into the origins of the Covid pandemic in Wuhan. On Friday last, concerned for her deteriorating health, the United Nations called for her release.

In this context of arbitrary arrest, imprisonment, torture and re-education—even genocide—who can seriously doubt that Hong Kong’s ex-servicemen, like Afghan interpreters or judges, will be primary targets as “two systems, one country” becomes “one system, one party, one ideology”? Recall that this is the same CCP responsible for the massacres in Tiananmen Square and for the enormities of the Cultural Revolution—and the deaths of 50 million Chinese people.

Through the Armed Forces covenant, we have the opportunity to demonstrate that we will not abandon loyal servants of the Crown, that we do not forget our debt of honour and obligations and that Parliament will go on supporting my noble and gallant friend until this wrong has been put right. It is for those reasons that I strongly support the amendment placed before your Lordships’ House by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay of Clashfern.

--- Later in debate ---

[Viscount Brookeborough (CB)]

My Lords, this was brought home to me when I was presenting Iraq campaign medals to returning soldiers a number of years ago. Since then I have met many who have returned from Afghanistan at official events. It is extraordinary when you hand out the medals and you come to somebody who is quite obviously of Commonwealth origin, and you actually have discrimination standing there in front of you. You have wounded people, if not physically then mentally, who are on parade. You are standing there and giving them a medal, and under your breath you are saying, “This is horrifying. I am totally horrified that you do not have the same or similar rights as the man or lady next door.”

This—our regard and respect for those people—surely comes under the spirit of the covenant. We simply cannot let this lie. It is not a great number of people, compared with the number receiving money put out as a result of Covid or, dare I say it, the number crossing the Channel. This could be killed here and now, in one go, and all those people would be not only happy but that much prouder to be as British as we would like them to be for their service abroad. I support this amendment.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, we had a good debate earlier when my noble and gallant friend Lord Craig spoke to Amendment 4 tabled by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay of Clashfern. There was a degree of unanimity around the House that this issue needed to be addressed. The Minister was good enough to say that, although she would not reply on Amendment 4 to the issue of Hong Kong ex-servicemen, when we reached this part of our proceedings on Amendment 26 she would be able to give us some reply. I rather hoped that might mean she wanted some space to try to digest some of the points that he and I tried to make earlier.

I particularly reinforce what the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Newnham, said about the relationship between the MoD and the Home Office on this. If nothing else comes of this evening, will the Minister agree to facilitate a meeting involving perhaps those who have participated in this debate but also her noble friend Lady Williams of Trafford, at which we might try to make some progress on these two questions—one about citizenship and the other about the specific position of the Hong Kong ex-servicemen?

If the Minister has the figures, I wonder if she could share with the House the number of people we are talking about who fall into the category—whether the figures I gave earlier are correct or not. Sometimes it is what you do in small things that matters most, and we are talking about very small numbers of people. It was a point alluded to my noble friend Lord Brookeborough a few moments ago, that when you compare this very small group with the number of people who try to arrive in the United Kingdom—some illegally—it is how we behave towards them that will matter.

This brought me back briefly to debates in another place in 1983, when I spoke on the nationality Act about citizenship and the effects it would have on people in Hong Kong. Sadly, many of the things predicted during that debate have come to pass. The trajectory we all hoped that Hong Kong might be on post 1997 —“one country, two systems”, and an honouring of the difference between Hong Kong and mainland China —has clearly not happened. That has left people in a precarious position, and none more so than those who served the Crown. I reinforce the point I made earlier: these people’s lives are clearly now in danger, and we have a duty to do something about that. It is a point that my noble friend Lord Dannatt made as well.

That is all I wanted to say. I know I had the chance to speak earlier on. I hope the Minister will think about how she can, in a practical way, take these two relatively small questions forward and see if we can get some justice for those involved.

[Baroness Goldie (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, for tabling this amendment and the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, for his remarks in support of it. I am also grateful to those who have contributed to the debate, not least the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Craig of Radley, the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, the noble Viscount, Lord Brookeborough, and the noble Lords, Lord Dannatt and Lord Alton.

I think your Lordships will understand that I am at the Dispatch Box as MoD Minister. I cannot speak on behalf of the FCDO or the Home Office, but let me try and address some of the more technical issues to at least give context to what the amendment seeks to achieve. The first thing I want to say is that the Government highly value the service of all members of our Armed Forces, including: our Commonwealth nationals, our Gurkhas in Nepal, who have a long and distinguished history of service to the UK both here and overseas; and former British Hong Kong service personnel.

Before I address the detail of the proposed new clauses, I would like to say a few words about the process for setting immigration fees. Application fees for immigration and nationality applications have been charged for a number of years. They are charged under powers set out under Section 68 of the Immigration Act 2014. They play a vital role in our country’s ability to run a sustainable borders and immigration system, reducing the burden that falls on taxpayers.

Sitting beneath the Immigration Act are a fees order and fees regulations, all of which are scrutinised by both Houses before they come into effect; there is a democratic prism to all this. This system ensures checks and balances, and it seeks to maintain the coherence of the immigration fees framework as set out in legislation. If we were to remove these fees during the passage of this Bill, as the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, suggests in his amendment, it would undermine the existing legal framework for fees, without proper consideration for either the sustainability of the system or fairness to the UK taxpayer. It would also reduce clarity in the fees structure by creating an alternative mechanism for controlling fees which sits outside the immigration fees regime.

When non-UK service personnel, including Commonwealth citizens and Gurkhas from Nepal, enlist in the regular Armed Forces, they are granted exemption from immigration control status for the duration of their service. That is to allow them to come and go without restriction. They are free from any requirements to make visa applications or pay any fees while they serve, and that is unlike almost every other category of migrant coming to work in the UK. Those who have served at least four years or been medically discharged as a result of service can choose to settle in the UK after their service and pay the relevant fee.

As a number of your Lordships are aware, the time before discharge that such settlement applications can be submitted has been extended this year from 10 to 18 weeks. Those applying for themselves do not have to meet an income requirement, be sponsored by an employer, or meet any requirements regarding their skills, knowledge of the English language or knowledge of life in the UK, again putting them in a favourable position compared with others who seek to settle here. We recognise, however, that settlement fees may place a financial burden on non-UK serving personnel wishing to remain in the UK after their discharge, and we recognise the strength of feeling of parliamentarians, service charities and the public on this issue.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)]

Can we press the Minister further on this point about the link between the MoD and the Home Office? She is of course right, but she has just said that it is a continuing process of consultation. The Home Office has been saying that for year after year, as referred to by my noble and gallant friend in his remarks earlier. When does the Minister think that that will conclude, and will she respond to the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, and me about the importance of facilitating a meeting between the Home Office, the MoD and noble Lords who are involved and interested in this issue?

[Baroness Goldie (Con)]

I would say to the noble Lord, Lord Alton, that I understand the strength of feelings so ably articulated by him, the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Craig of Radley, the noble Lord, Lord Dannatt, the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, and the noble Viscount, Lord Brookeborough. I understand the strength of feeling expressed in the House in relation to individuals who have served this country. But, as I have explained, there is an existing legal framework in place for immigration fees which already enables proper consideration to be given by government and Parliament to the full range of issues in setting those fees.

The issues raised by this amendment are already subject to a consultation that is entering its final stages. I can tell the noble Lord, Lord Alton, that I have no magic wand that I can wave, and that this is another department’s responsibility. I can also confirm that the specific issues around Hong Kong are also under consideration.