MR PHIL WOOLAS MP, MR KEVAN JONES MP, MS LIN HOMER AND MR JOHN PITT-BROOKE

5 MAY 2009

  Q1 Chairman: This is an inquiry into the rights of settlement for Gurkhas. This is the second time the Committee has considered this matter. We had an evidence session last year and we published both the written and oral evidence of that on 1 May. Mr Jones, you have brought with you Mr John Pitt-Brooke. For the benefit of the Committee, could you tell us who he is?

  Mr Jones: Would you like to introduce yourself?

  Mr Pitt-Brooke: My title is the Director General Secretariat in Land Forces of the Ministry of Defence.

  Mr Jones: He is basically the senior civil servant dealing with the Army and Land Forces.

  Q2  Chairman: Mr Woolas, we know Lin Homer, she is a frequent guest of this Committee at hearings. Thank you both very much for agreeing to give evidence to this Committee at such very short notice. Bearing in mind the Government's defeat last Wednesday in the House of Commons, do you now accept that the Government seriously misjudged the mood of the public and Parliament in dealing with the settlement rights of Gurkhas?

  Mr Woolas: Chairman, thank you very much to you and your Committee for the invitation to move the policy forward, which we are very pleased to take up. The Government acts within restrictions placed on it by finances and law and must make decisions within that context. The judgment of whether or not a policy is popular is a political judgment but does not change the very stubborn facts that we have to deal with.

  Q3  Chairman: Mr Jones, did you seriously misjudge the mood of Parliament or did you expect to be defeated?

  Mr Jones: I do numbers very well, Chairman. I have my own private thoughts on those issues. The key point is that, whatever policy is developed from hereon in, we cannot somehow take out of that the implications it has both on MoD budgets and on the future role of recruiting Gurkhas in Nepal. The important point is to reemphasise the Government's commitment to recruiting Gurkhas and making sure that we support the welfare of ex-Gurkhas, which I think we have got a proud record of the Government doing.

  Q4  Chairman: Mr Woolas, the Committee wrote to you on 4 November last year with a unanimous view on this matter. Why did it take you six months to reply to my letter?

  Mr Woolas: We tried to take the instruction from the court, which was very clear in saying that the 1997 cut-off date was fair and legal, but that the guidelines, as your letter pointed out and the evidence given on 4 November covered as well, for pre-1997 were not clear and were not fair. We therefore set about redrafting the guidelines in a way which was as helpful as possible to the Gurkhas and retired Gurkhas and their dependants without breaching the principles that I talked about in the debate on Wednesday.

  Q5  Chairman: And it took you six months to do this?

  Mr Woolas: It took six months from the court judgment. We had to wait a few days for the written judgment. We had the usual restrictions of the requirement to check with other government departments and indeed talk to other interested parties about that. We published the guidelines within the timescale that the subsequent court had instructed us to. The reason for the time period was that we wanted to get the guidelines as best we could within the restrictions that I have outlined in a way that was beneficial.

  Q6  Chairman: Were you surprised that the Home Secretary was emailing Members of Parliament changing the dateline on the review while you were at the Dispatch Box not giving the assurances that Members of Parliament wanted? It seemed that the motion, once it had been put down by the Government in opposition to the Liberal Democrat motion, was basically out-of-date by the time Members of Parliament voted on it.

  Mr Woolas: No. I was aware at the Dispatch Box of what was going on and, of course, was party to it.

  Q7  Chairman: So why did you not tell the House the policy had changed?

  Mr Woolas: I think a fair reading of Hansard will show that in answer to the questions from the honourable gentleman for Knowsley North I did make that clear.

  Q8  Tom Brake: As Hazel Blears has been saying, is this not just down to political antennae? If Tony Blair had been in power as the Prime Minister would this have happened?

  Mr Woolas: The point about political antennae, Mr Brake, is one that is used in debates in the Chamber. If you are the Minister for Immigration and you are the Minister for the Armed Forces' budget you cannot play politics with the law or with the money. We recognise that we will have to come back with new plans and we will be looking to your Committee to help us with that, Chairman, we recognise that, of course. Political populism does not change the facts. We contend that the facts of finance and the legal precedents are real.

  Q9  Patrick Mercer: As constituency Members of Parliament, I am sure over the past 12 months you will have seen this issue building in your postbags. To my amazement, when the current Government disbanded the Nottinghamshire Regiment it raised hardly a murmur, sadly, inside Newark, yet with this one my postbag has been filled for the last year.

  Mr Woolas: Not as filled as mine!

  Q10  Patrick Mercer: I understand that there are issues about immigration and expense and also an even handling of soldiers from other parts of other countries. The Gurkhas are central to the spirit of the British Army and to the esteem in which your soldiers are held. It was a terrible misjudgment, was it not?

  Mr Jones: I do not think anyone disagrees with the point that the Gurkhas should be held in highest esteem. I have met them both in Afghanistan and Iraq. I know you have served with them as well, Mr Mercer. I think this Government has got a proud record of supporting ex-Gurkhas and current recruits. Have we had a very effective lobbying campaign on this? Yes, we have. If you go on the website you can get a `Gurkhas for Justice' hoodie and t-shirt, it is a well-organised campaign, but that does not take away from the fact that there are implications about doing away with the pre-1997 cut-off rule, which has been held up in court, that does have implications not only in terms of cost but in terms of immigration and on the defence budget as well. When the judgment was made the impression given was that the judge had ruled that 1997 had been done away with because it was unlawful. That was not the case. To be fair to the Home Office, they reacted to that. On the second point, some outlandish statements have been made about the judgment and how we have treated Gurkhas. It is very important to look at what we are doing for Gurkhas and this Government has done a lot. Clearly the will of the House last week was that we need to do more, but I am certainly not having lessons off certain people who spoke in that debate about support for Gurkhas or servicemen.

  Martin Salter: It is impossible to conceive, is it not, Mr Woolas, that the Government could have made a bigger pig's ear of this than they have in that a policy announced on Friday is disowned the following Wednesday and is going to be reviewed in a few weeks' time? Is it any wonder that ministers collectively were in a difficult place on this issue given the advice you had received from officials? I have a copy of that advice which I have made available to my colleagues on the Committee that came from Government itself.

  Chairman: I think the Minister will need a copy if you are going to refer to it. Do we have a copy for the Minister?

  Q11  Martin Salter: Certainly. Let me hand that over. The estimate of costs that was put in front of ministers ranged from £425 million to £1.6 billion. The upper end of that figure has been quoted extensively by ministers, £1.4 billion to £1.6 billion, yet nowhere is the lower range of those costs being put forward. Nowhere in this analysis is there an assumption that Gurkhas coming to this country would be working, would be paying taxes and would be making a contribution to our economy. Is it not offensive that decisions are being made on the basis of an influx of Gurkhas being a huge drain on our housing, on our welfare and on our National Health Service when in fact practical experience shows that, where we have substantial Gurkha communities, the vast majority are in employment and are paying tax and are a net benefit to this country? Why were those facts not brought forward in the debate and in advice to ministers?

  Mr Woolas: The financial implications of the decision on immigration policy looked at from the Exchequer's point of view include implications on intended consequences and precedents that may be set. We chose not to put those figures into the public domain. We chose to put the figures on the Gurkhas only. We made it very clear both in Parliament and in media statements that these were estimates, that nobody knows, it is an unknown as to how many people would take up the offer under any of the scenarios that were put forward. We made it clear that the figures were "up to". The figures that Mr Salter is referring to relate to estimates of the implications for benefits, they do not mention the implications for pensions.

  Mr Jones: This is an issue which was raised in the debate by the Member for Reading West. In Nepal on a Gurkha service pension, which for an average private is about £150, you can have quite a good standard of living. Come here and that clearly it is not going to buy you a good standard of living. The concern the MoD has—and it was an issue which was raised with me when I was in Nepal three weeks ago—is the whole issue about pre-1997 pensions coming in line with post-1997 pensions. If that happens, the estimate that I have is that it would be somewhere in the region of £1.5 billion.

  Q12  Gwyn Prosser: Mr Woolas, is it not the case that the goodwill which we engendered by making quite significant and radical changes when we first came into office with regard to settlement, pensions and pay has been almost wholly undermined by last week's incidents? Even if the Government—and we hope they will—come back with far more generous and fairer recommendations for the future, the taste left in the mouth is that the Government had to be dragged kicking and screaming into making a decision which just about everyone I talk to and everyone in the country seems to support.

  Mr Woolas: Chairman, I think the point about the handling and the politics of this, from the correspondence that I have received and my own experience in my constituency and elsewhere, is that there is a widespread recognition that the Government has treated the Gurkhas through the 2004 settlement well and that the expectation over the 1997 cut-off point being abolished was raised by some in a way that raises expectations, but I do not think that is the political issue. I think the political issue is the widespread perception that the immigration system is letting people into our country who are not deserving and is not letting people in who are perceived to be morally deserving. It is that issue that is difficult for an immigration minister to handle because we argue that our systems of migration, particularly through the points-based system and the changes that have been made in the last two, three, four years—

  Q13  Chairman: We will come on to the specifics in a second. I have one final question on the handling. Who signed off the decision? Was it the Home Secretary, the Defence Secretary or was this signed off by the Prime Minister?

  Mr Woolas: It was a collective decision of Government that went through the normal Whitehall procedures and therefore all ministers involved signed off the decision.

  Q14  Chairman: Including the Prime Minister? Would there have been a discussion in Cabinet on this?

  Mr Woolas: My understanding is that there was a discussion at Cabinet. I am hesitating because I am not sure at what stage of the development of the guidelines that discussion was.

  Q15  Chairman: So you think it went to Cabinet but you are not sure?

  Mr Woolas: I know the issue went to Cabinet.

  Chairman: Let us now look at the substance of what you have proposed.

  Q16  Bob Russell: Minister, from a political critic perhaps a word of comfort. As I mentioned to you during the question to you after the statement you gave the House, your Government has done more for Gurkhas post-1997 than any other government in history, which makes it all the more unfortunate, to put it mildly, that the pre-1997 Gurkhas have been treated in the way they have and, therefore, the Government has ended up at the wrong end of the public relations situation. Would you agree with me that if my Ten Minute Rule Bill of last May or my questions to the Prime Minister in November or Early Day Motion number one or indeed the unanimous recommendation of this Committee had been adopted the Government would not be in this mess now?

  Mr Woolas: I have to say that you have been consistent in your point of view on that and I have no disagreement with that. However, having said that, it is fairly easy to take a consistent decision which involves extra resources. What is difficult is the consequential decisions that one must take and that is the issue that is missing out of this whole debate, apart from a few commentators who have pointed that out.

  Q17  Bob Russell: We are where we are. What precisely will the further review you have announced address and what conclusions do you expect it to reach?

  Mr Woolas: Chairman, as I said in the statement to the House on Wednesday night, we recognise the vote of the House of Commons. That is the House expressing its view and we must respond to that. We intend, as we said in the statement, to come forward with the lessons from the applications and the outstanding 1,500 appeals. We wish to share with you and your Committee the statistics and the figures that we have in the hope that you can assist us and help us in the development of this policy. When we have reviewed those 1,500 we will be able to consider the new proposals in the light of those two pieces of evidence so that we can move on from where we are because everybody wants to get this sorted, not least the people who have been waiting for their applications to be dealt with.

  Q18  Martin Salter: I want to move on to the issue of the criteria that was announced. Mr Jones, can you confirm for the record what the Gurkha Riflemen's terms and conditions of service are for the length of service set prior to 1997, both for riflemen, warrant officers and lieutenants?

  Mr Jones: What I really want to do is explain the nonsense that has been spoken about this. The impression given is that under the new criteria this will only affect officers. I have got the actual figures. Under the new 20-year rule the qualification will be 2,197 ex-Gurkhas could apply and that is made up of 993 officers and 1,204 other ranks on retirement. The other issue—and I seemed to be scoffed at when I raised this in the House—is that they do not recruit officers, everyone joins as a private soldier and then serves, as has been outlined, 15 years. So to suggest somehow that this only affects officers is not true.

  Q19  Martin Salter: Now could you try answering the question which I am going to repeat for you? The Gurkha terms and conditions of service prior to 1997 are laid down. Are they not 15 years contractual for riflemen, 22 years for a warrant officer class one, 20 years for a warrant officer class two and 24 years for a lieutenant? Is it not the case that 85% of all serving Gurkhas retire at the rank of corporal or below?

   Mr Jones: No. What you misunderstand is that the Brigade of Gurkhas do not recruit officers directly. Everyone joins as a private. So to say that someone joins for 15 years, for example, is incorrect because there are those that go on to become sergeants or warrant officers and they will serve longer than that. In terms of the criteria that were laid down, I have also asked for the figures for how many riflemen would qualify. I think somewhere in the region of 500 additional ones would qualify as well.

  Chairman: I think Mr Salter is a bit upset because you have not answered his question.