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Gurkha Settlement Rights

We have had a good and lively debate this afternoon. My hon. Friend the Member for Eastleigh (Chris Huhne) started it off by reminding the House that we owe a debt of honour, which we are repaying with the penny-pinching mentality of an accountant, as the Government try to get away with the least that they think they can under the terms of the law court ruling. I do not know whether it will prove that they have done enough today, but I am perfectly clear that they have approached the task with as mean a spirit as they could. In the bandying of numbers between my hon. Friend and the Minister, we saw the absurdity of the Government's case. I do not assert that the 1,350 whose cases are currently at the Home Office would be the end of the matter, but it is nonsensical for the Government to total up the maximum number and then bandy it about as representing those who are likely to wish to take advantage of such a right. We do not devise our immigration policies with any other part of the world, the free movement of citizens within the EU, or the policies that we adopt for Commonwealth countries, on the basis that every person who could avail themselves of them is likely to do so. It is a completely illogical approach to the issue. I regret hearing Ministers do that, as they have the right to pat themselves on the back for what they did in 2004, and for their improvements to the conditions of Gurkhas, to which the hon. Member for Halton (Derek Twigg) referred. By doing what they did in 2004, and creating the entitlement for those who have served since 1997, they have crossed the line in principle. They have done the big thing, and are being dragged kicking and screaming on the smaller issue of who served before 1997. By creating mythological numbers, they are putting a stain on that for which they deserve congratulation. I do not accept the logic of the 1997 threshold as those on the Conservative and Labour Front Benches seem to accept. The fact that the Gurkhas were garrisoned in Hong Kong until 1997 is of no real significance. The Government seem almost to have looked for something that happened in 1997—they might as well have asked who won the FA cup in that year, and hung everything around that. The point is of no significance. The Gurkhas were members of the British armed forces, and were sent to serve in different parts of the world, and it is of no consequence whatever that they happened to be garrisoned in Hong Kong. They cannot settle in Hong Kong—their service was not to Hong Kong or China, but to Britain. That gives them the moral entitlement to settle in the UK, and that is what we are debating this afternoon.