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Gurkha Settlement Rights

I understand that point. The decision was retrospective to 1 July 1997. Those who have been granted settlement include significant numbers—3,500 from the previous period, before the 1997 cut-off, and 2,500 post-1997. The hon. Gentleman's point is valid in that regard. We come to the crux of the matter. The judicial review was launched against the background of that policy. It challenged both the 1997 so-called cut-off date and the guidance under which decisions were made on pre-1997 cases. The question has been asked, not least in the media today, where the guidelines come from. The answer is that they come from the instruction of the High Court to clarify the guidance pre-1997. On the 1997 cut-off, the judge, Justice Blake, said:""The identification of July 1997 . . . was not an arbitrary or irrational consideration."" He went on to say that""it cannot have been irrational or unjustifiable to distinguish July 1997 as the date after which rights as opposed to discretion to settle in the United Kingdom accrued."" So we have a judgment from the judge that the 1997 cut-off date is fair and lawful—[Interruption. ] His exact words were "not . . . irrational". The Government changed the situation in 2004, which has allowed 6,000 Gurkhas plus their families—some 3,500 from before 1997—to settle in this country. No Government from 1948 to 2004 allowed the settlement of Gurkhas in the UK. From 1948, when the brigade was established on its modern-day footing, until 1997, the number of Gurkhas who were given naturalisation in the United Kingdom was five—five ex-Gurkhas. It is against that background that the motion from the official Opposition claims that the current Government have betrayed the Gurkhas and implies that we should get rid of the 1997 cut-off—something that no Government did from the second world war until Tony Blair did it in 2004.