Citizenship (Armed Forces) Bill

Lord Cormack Excerpts

Friday 7th February 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

My Lords, it is very refreshing to be here on a Friday in early 2014 with a Bill before us on which I think we can all agree. It is a rather refreshing contrast to the experiences of recent Friday sittings. I give my support to my noble friend Lord Trefgarne unreservedly, and I do so for personal as well as general reasons. Having been born in Lincolnshire, I was brought up in Scotland during the war, as my father was stationed up there. One of his prized possessions, which is still a treasured memento within the family, was a little silver cigarette lighter inscribed by Polish officers whom he had instructed in the arts of navigation in the war. I can remember one or two of those Polish officers coming to our home and my father saying what marvellous men they were. At the end of the war I went back to Grimsby, the town I had been born in. A Polish regiment, the Carpathian Lancers, was being disbanded. Many of those soldiers became esteemed members of the local community. They also took up British citizenship, not necessarily because they wanted to do so—they wanted to go back to Poland—but because Poland had been absorbed into the Soviet bloc and they could only hope to enjoy freedom by staying in the United Kingdom. As I say, many of them became valued members of the local community.

We have moved on since then, and indeed in a year’s time we will be marking the 70th anniversary of the end of the Second World War, but it does well for us to remind ourselves, while we are discussing what I hope is a totally uncontroversial Bill, of just what we in this country owe to those who were not necessarily born as British subjects, but who took up arms to fight for freedom and, in the process, to fight for our country and for what they believed in. Today, the circumstances are very different, but even now we still depend, with the much reduced numbers in our Armed Forces, on a number of people who are not native-born British subjects. We all know about the Gurkhas, but there are many others from the Commonwealth and other countries who give valiant service. A number have been decorated for their service in Afghanistan, and some have lost their lives. So it is wholly right that those who enlist in the British Armed Forces should not suffer any impediment if they wish to become British subjects while they are still serving in the forces, when they have retired, or if they have been forced to leave through injury.

This is a modest measure but it is a very important one symbolically. I hope that we will never need to talk of it in a Scottish context. I give my noble friend my total support. We all owe him a debt of gratitude for bringing the Bill forward, and I trust that it will receive the unanimous support of all Members of your Lordships’ House.