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Gurkha Settlement Rights

I will come to that point in a moment. There are 26,000 Gurkha pensioners in Nepal. My right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester, East (Keith Vaz) asked how we know how many there are; we know because we are paying them pensions. Some £54 million is therefore going into the Nepalese economy. The DFID budget is only £56 million. Some have suggested that taking that money out of the Nepalese economy will have no effect, but that is definitely not the case. It is important to recognise that the service pensioners whom I met last week would not claim that they did not have a good standard of living. I am sad that lawyers representing the Gurkha Army Ex-Servicemen's Organisation, which is involved in the campaign, failed to turn up for the meeting that I had arranged with them. They later issued a press release condemning me for not meeting them. The House should be careful when it comes to some of the tactics being used in this debate. I asked some of the service pensioners whether they would want to come here, and most said, "No, but our families and children would." For those service pensioners, this Government have a proud record. The increase in their pensions over the past 10 years has been some 500 per cent., and we cannot just ignore the financial contribution that that makes to the economy of Nepal. The second group of pensioners are the welfare pensioners, who did not accrue the service pension—like many who serve in the British Army—because they did not serve for long enough. In this country, they get no pension at all, but in Nepal they are paid the equivalent of £30 a month through the Gurkha Welfare Trust, which the MOD supports through a grant of more than £1 million a year and through administrative support. Then there is the medical care. According to some of the commentators, the Gurkhas want to come here because they lack medical care in Nepal, but that is not the case. Service pensioners and welfare pensioners get free primary health care, and their secondary health care is supported by the trust. Service pensioners, who already get a good income, also get a percentage of the cost of their care paid. On the subject of the Gurkha Welfare Trust, may I put on the record our thanks to those people? They are doing a first-rate job and since my visit I have given a commitment that I will review MOD support and see what else we can do to help. Those people are truly inspirational, not just because of their help for Gurkhas but because of their charity work in villages and helping the wider community in Nepal. May I address some of the points that were made in the debate. Quite clearly, the main Opposition party has a problem with this issue. Over the past few days, I have been trying to work out what its policies would be. For example, on Monday The Sun declared that the right hon. Member for Witney (Mr. Cameron) is now supporting the Gurkha campaign. Anyone can defy me if, after reading the article, they can say what conclusion he comes to. Today, we have heard a very clear policy. Under the regulations, there would be new criteria that allowed anyone who had served in Her Majesty's armed forces to settle in the UK. That would include personnel from India, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Burma, Singapore, Kenya and Rhodesia, to name but a few. My hon. Friend the Member for Sunderland, South (Mr. Mullin) made a very good point about the Tory track record. When the Tories had the opportunity to reward servicemen and women, they did not. In the draw-down from Hong Kong, only one in seven of the Crown officers and able personnel was allowed in. We are seeing crocodile tears, I think. The Conservatives' policy would have an immense cost and would drive a coach and horses through the immigration policy of this country. I am glad that they have clarified that policy. Let me clear up another point about the 20 years. The idea that only officers who served would qualify is not true. They all started as privates and 55 per cent. of the people who will qualify will not be officers. The other issue that we need to clarify, which was raised by the right hon. and learned Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Howard), concerns the position of the Government of Nepal and the court case. The Nepalese official who gave evidence to the court case did so in a private capacity. There was nobody there from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Nepalese Government have not given a view about whether they support Gurkha welfare or not.