Citizenship (Armed Forces) Bill
Debate between Mel Stride and Edward Leigh(11 years, 2 months ago)
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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.
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.
HEALTH
Debate between Mel Stride and Edward Leigh(11 years, 11 months ago)
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Mel Stride (Central Devon) (Con)
I want to thank and salute many hundreds—possibly even thousands—of people in my constituency who make a huge contribution every year to the communities in which they live, often on a voluntary basis. I know that it is very fashionable nowadays to suggest that communities are constantly under pressure, disintegrating, transitory or being disaggregated in one form or another, but I am here to reassure the House that in Central Devon community is alive and whole.
It is invidious to single out individual organisations and individuals, of course, because for every one I mention there are many I will not have time to mention. None the less, some have been particularly special to me as a Member of Parliament over the past couple of years. I want to start with a gentleman called Brian Warren, who has run an organisation called Farm Crisis Network for the past decade or so. It provides pastoral support to our farming community, which, as you will know, Mr Deputy Speaker, has been under considerable pressure over many years. The foot and mouth outbreak in 2001 had its epicentre in Hatherleigh in my constituency, and many of us still remember to this day the pyres burning, the burning cattle and the pall of black smoke that filled the skies above Devon. It was a very difficult time. We are also aware of the difficulties associated with bovine TB and the challenges of milk prices, which are under pressure from supermarkets. Brian has done an extraordinary job with his colleagues on an entirely voluntary basis, providing compassion to many farmers in my constituency who have much needed it.
I want also to thank all those who are involved in the 125 town and parish councils that I have scattered across my 550 square miles of Devon. I can assure hon. Members that I do not manage to get round all of them on a regular basis—there are too many—but many people give up a great deal of their time, and that is much appreciated. I particularly thank the town clerks of my larger towns—Judith Hart in Buckfastleigh, John Germon in Ashburton, Terry Westwood in Bovey Tracey, John Carlton in Chudleigh, Martin Maggs in Crediton, and Don Bent in Okehampton. For all the people they serve, a big thank you.
I have had quite a lot of involvement with the Royal British Legion this year. It does an extraordinary job for many well deserving men and women and the families of those who fight on our behalf. We have heard much about Afghanistan this afternoon. The Royal British Legion is not just the custodian of remembrance. It also provides practical help to individuals and families, and I am particularly grateful to the Royal British Legion in Ashburton. I should like to thank Maurice Mann, David Lewis, Kath Pugh and Bob Shemeld for the support they have given to the legion locally.
I thank Sandra Coleman, who has looked after the museum, the Valiant Soldier, which was a pub that was closed in Buckfastleigh in 1965 and has been preserved exactly as it was the day that it closed, including the coins and the change in the till. In addition to looking after the museum, Sandra has started a project to preserve and archive the history of the town. I was privileged to have been present when she was awarded the freedom of the town of Buckfastleigh in July this year.
I salute Sue Eales, a lady who has fostered many children in and around Ashburton. She provides them with the love, happiness, respect and security that we would all like to see our children receive. She is a very special lady, one of those great unsung heroes, and I am very proud to be able to mention her in this debate. I mention also Deborah Sterling, who has fought hard for youth services in Ashburton, especially a new skateboard park, and her son, for his imagination in designing the park.
Peter Mallaband, who lives in New Park near Bovey Tracey, has assisted me a great deal in the work that I and many others in the House have done in respect of park home legislation and in trying to improve the rights of park home owners. Peter has always been immensely generous with his time, not just to me, but to other local residents in other local parks in my constituency, including those who live in Buckingham Orchard in Chudleigh Knighton, who have had a particularly difficult period over the past few years.
I thank Wendy Brown and Sue Goode, who run the Crediton food bank and whose services will be much appreciated and in many cases much needed this Christmas. I thank Chris Gibbs, who has done a huge amount to support his community of Tedburn St Mary, so much so that he was in the vanguard of that village being voted the best village in England and Wales some years ago on the strength of its community cohesion and the vibrancy of the community there. I was privileged to work with him in fending off a proposed permanent road closure that would have much inconvenienced the local villagers.
I would like to mention Sally Hordern, who lives in the village of Exbourne and has fought very hard to get a new community store there ever since the village store closed just over a decade ago. She fought through all the obstacles. I had the privilege earlier this year of opening that extraordinary store, which is partly underground. It has a beautiful design and is a great monument and tribute to her and all those who worked on the project.
I would like to pay tribute to the people of Kennford and Buckfastleigh, who endured some of the worst flooding the country has seen recently, and I was grateful that the Prime Minister was able to come down to Buckfastleigh to meet some of the residents. One of the things that struck me was that, although it was an absolute tragedy, particularly for those affected, it was also an opportunity for the community to come together, and they did so magnificently.
I would like to salute Mary Stephenson, a constituent who has done a great deal regarding prisoner rehabilitation and looking after families whose loved ones have gone to prison. I spent some time with her at Channings Wood prison earlier this year and was much moved and impressed by her project and by her work and dedication and that of her colleagues.
I would like to thank Paul Dobbie, who runs the Room 13 youth facility in Okehampton, a vibrant and positive place, and Chris Marson, who lives in the small village of Northlew in the west of my constituency. He has managed to improve the broadband connection significantly by employing ingenious new technologies, which has helped the village a great deal, and he has also furthered the new community store there.
It remains for me finally to thank the staff in my office, Chris Yeo and, in particular, Dominic King and Mike Knuckey, for supporting me and all my demanding ways. I also wish to thank my family—
Mel Stride
I will thank my hon. Friend in due course.
I thank my wife Michelle and my three daughters. I also wish you, Mr Deputy Speaker, your family and, indeed, your millions of admirers up and down the country a very happy Christmas and hope that I have many more speaking opportunities at your behest in 2013.