David Cameron offers real help to Government as Gurkhas seek justice from the country they fought to defend.
Prospective Winchester MP Steve Brine has welcomed David Cameron’s decision to challenge Gordon Brown on the subject of Justice for Gurkhas at today’s Prime Ministers Questions in the House of Commons.
Steve says; “I have been contacted by so many people in the past few days furious at the Government’s decision to back away from its own recent decision on allowing Gurkha’s to settle in the UK and I share their anger. I know there is rightly a great demand locally for a more detailed response on the question of the rights of Gurkhas who left the service before 1997 to settle in this country so David Cameron’s help today at the high-profile PMQs was very welcome”.
Mr Cameron repeated the view that we believe the Government’s response to a High Court decision disallowing their previous policy is unfair and ungenerous. The Government has set a new range of restrictive criteria for settlement, which would deny the vast majority of Gurkhas any chance of coming to the UK.
We want to be fair to the Gurkhas. We have already said that we would introduce a limit on visas allowed under the Points-Based Immigration System, to ensure that those who come here benefit British society. We believe that former Gurkhas, and other foreign-born ex-service personnel, have already contributed to our society, and have therefore earned the right to come here.
A Conservative Government, if elected next year (or sooner!) would allow pre-1997 Gurkhas the right to settle in the UK. To enable this to happen within the terms of our proposed immigration policy, we would create a new tier within the Points-Based System, which each year would allow a specified number of visas for non-UK ex-servicemen. We will conduct research to see how much demand there is for such visas.
Furthermore, this policy does not necessarily have to wait for the election of a new Conservative Government; Mr Cameron reminded Gordon Brown that there is an immigration bill going through Parliament at this very time giving Ministers the perfect opportunity to step up and help the Gurkhas. We will see.
We think this policy would be fair to our veterans, particularly the Gurkhas, consistent with our proposals for a controlled immigration policy, and affordable within the welfare budget. The vast majority of those who have already come here from Nepal have proved exemplary workers and members of society, and we are sure that new arrivals of working age would prove the same.
If you want to watch these exchanges between David Cameron and Gordon Brown from today’s PMQ’s, please goto the BBC News Politics pages where there is usually the chance to watch a full reply later in the day http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/default.stm