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Gurkha Settlement Rights

I did mention the letter from the Home Secretary, but my right hon. Friend was talking to our right hon. Friend the Member for Enfield, North (Joan Ryan) and did not hear me. However, whether the letter comes from the Home Secretary or the Minister for Borders and Immigration and whether it is written in blood, wax or whatever, I have such an enormous immigration case load that I have difficultly accepting that the Home Office and the immigration and nationality directorate can process 1,500 cases by June. I do not think they can do it. Let me turn to the crux of what I want to say, which is about the decision of the Select Committee on Home Affairs last year. We wrote a letter to the Minister for Borders and Immigration on 4 November last year—this also goes to the question of speed—that reflected a unanimous decision by the Committee after taking evidence from him and from campaigners from the Gurkha community. The letter said four things. First, the Committee recognised the historic debt of gratitude that is owed to the Gurkhas. We called them brave, loyal and distinguished. Secondly, we agreed that the current Government policy of distinguishing those Gurkhas who retired before 1 July from those who retired afterwards has, in effect, created two classes of Gurkhas. We considered that there was no reason for that distinction. Thirdly, we concluded that the treatment of the Gurkhas was unfair, given the discrepancy between that and the settlement rights afforded to other Commonwealth citizens. Fourthly, we asked the Minister to bring forward regulations to replace the regulations that have already been declared unlawful and to extend the rights of settlement to all the Gurkhas who had applied for settlement. That was absolutely in keeping with the motion that the Liberal Democrats have tabled. The Committee came to a unanimous decision—I see one Committee member, the hon. Member for Colchester (Bob Russell), in his place. I will now need the speech of a lifetime from the Under-Secretary of State for Defence, my hon. Friend the Member for North Durham (Mr. Jones), to convince me that the Government's position has changed since the motion that they have tabled. We need to move much further. My final point relates to the issue raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Mr. Drew). The view that there has to be an impact assessment for other countries—in this case Nepal—when Parliament takes a decision on immigration policy is ludicrous. I came here as a first-generation immigrant, and for a country that at one stage ruled a third of the world suddenly to start talking about having impact assessments is bizarre. My hon. Friend the Minister for Borders and Immigration will know the Bangladeshi community in Oldham. He will know, as will anyone who knows the south Asian community, that just because those people are settled in Oldham, that does not mean that they do not have connections with Bangladesh or that they do not send remittances back to their country of origin. It is a spurious argument that is being developed. I have received no representations from the Government of Nepal, but to be perfectly frank, would we take into consideration representations made by India about the points-based system? I do not think so, because India is against the points-based system, yet we have already told India that we are going to implement it anyway. For those reasons I am still minded to support the Liberal Democrat motion, despite the speech from the Opposition Front Bench, which almost put me off. However, the Lobbies belong to everybody and, in keeping with the unanimous decision of the Home Affairs Committee, I think that that is the honourable thing for me as the Chairman to do, given that I signed the letter to the Home Secretary.