MS JOANNA LUMLEY AND MADAN GURUNG

5 MAY 2009

  Q44 Chairman: Ms Lumley and Mr Gurung, thank you very much for coming to give evidence to the Committee at such very short notice. Ms Lumley, what is your view of the Government's defeat in the Commons last week? Is this a vindication of the campaign that you and the Gurkhas have organised over the last two years? Do you also feel that the undertakings given by the Minister to the House last week and indeed in session today will help resolve this issue once and for all?

  Ms Lumley: First of all, I think we were absolutely jubilant with the result. The Gurkha Justice Campaign has been going on for several years. First of all we got the High Court ruling which was behind us. Then we went to the people through our websites and the people were behind us. Then the press came onside, which was unexpected, that people from the Financial Times down to the red tops universally supported the Gurkha cause. Then to find in Parliament particularly the brave MPs of the Labour Party who voted with the Lib Dems and with the Conservatives for the Gurkhas. It seemed to me that it was a pretty clear-cut decision. So there was jubilation outside the court. The papers took it and ran with it. The sense of euphoria has been going round the country and has communicated itself to all of us. To my shock, I heard today that the ECO in Delhi are still operating on this policy, they are using this policy and I understand the motion, so it should be discontinued or thrown out at once. They are having to go ahead with it because they have not been told that the policy has been rejected. If not legally thrown out, it has pretty comprehensively been trashed. The message is to take this policy away and rewrite it, but Delhi is going ahead with it, although by our estimation only about 47 of the Delhi applicants would qualify by the criteria that were rejected by Parliament.

  Q45  Chairman: Are you pleased that the Government gave an undertaking to the House that they would review the rules again and that they would clear the backlog, as the Minister has just said, by the end of May?

  Ms Lumley: We are. I hate to say things like we have been here before. We were promised by the Home Secretary a review of all the 1,500 applicants and a new policy by 31 December of last year. That is why we had to go back to the High Court when that was not forthcoming and the High Court had to order the Government to come up with a new policy and to have reviewed the applications by 24 April.

  Q46  Bob Russell: Ms Lumley, do you think it realistic to say that all or even most of the former Gurkhas would take up the settlement if it were offered to all? Why would they not want to take up such an offer?

  Ms Lumley: It is all kinds of things. First of all, they say "What about the Second World War veterans?" Well, I am a pensioner and I was not born until after the War. So we are talking about people well into their eighties. The chances of them upping sticks and leaving their homeland of Nepal to come and start a new life in a completely strange and different modern country is just not on the cards. I have Lieutenant Gurung on my right. Our fathers served together in the same regiment, the 6th Gurkha Rifles. The policy came through last Friday. He has been waiting in limbo to hear if his application would be successful. His application would be successful but he would not take it up because no lieutenant would leave his men behind. I think that is an Army way of thinking which maybe has not been brought into this equation. I do not think the officers or the medal winners who are entitled to come will come if they have to leave their men behind.

  Chairman: May I just remind all those present that the Register of Members' Interests sets out clearly the interests of members. I should have done this at the start of the session. My wife is an immigration solicitor and a part-time judge.

  Q47  Martin Salter: Ms Lumley, would you not agree that it is slightly absurd to suggest that all of the 36,000 Gurkhas and their dependants are likely to move en masse to Britain if the cut-off date is moved back, particularly given that the British Government requires a fee of £585 per person to apply in the first place and the airfare is anything between £400 and £600? That actually represents the sum total of an average year's pension for a Gurkha veteran. This would be a massive gamble for all of the Gurkhas to take and therefore figures predicated on those numbers are, frankly, fantasy figures.

  Ms Lumley: Yes, they are because 36,000 is the number who may, if they choose, take up the right. £500 is a lot of money in anybody's reckoning. If you think that a Gurkha out there is paid about £28 a week in pension, this represents an enormously long period of time of saving up. I understand if the application is not successful the fee is not returnable. So this is a tremendously huge step to take.

  Q48  Martin Salter: Would you also not agree that the argument about the impact of Gurkhas moving to Britain on the economy of Nepal is grossly overstated given that we are talking about a country of 29 million people, we are talking about considerably less than 36,000 Gurkhas and we are talking about £265 billion globally to developed countries in remittances? Actually, if the MoD was so worried about the impact of recruiting soldiers from developing countries why on earth is the Ministry of Defence recruiting from Fiji and other countries that are also in the grip of poverty and deprivation?

  Ms Lumley: I do not know. Also, I have been tipped off that the economy of Nepal is something like $31 billion. It does not seem as though £50 million is going to rock the boat very much over here. It has been pointed out before that the retired soldiers who come to this country largely would come into this country to work. Just as the Chairman has pointed out, the ethnic minority communities almost always send an enormous amount of money back to their places where they are born and where they stay. I understand too that in Nepal if you leave the country and do not go back there you forfeit your rights to pieces of land. Most of the people would come over here for a period of time rather than moving and staying here forever. That period of time might include treatment for illnesses. Not all of these are in-house illnesses. They are things that could be treated, cataracts or blood pressure, things that are quite small which cannot be dealt with successfully in Nepal. We are talking about a Plan B for Gurkhas. If they so need it they would be able to come.

  Q49  Chairman: Mr Gurung, do you think that granting the Gurkhas settlement rights in this country would have a big impact on the Nepalese economy or do you believe that people will continue to go and visit and resettle there and continue to give remittances back to Nepal?

  Madan Gurung: First of all, I do not think that it will have an impact in the country of Nepal on the economic side of things because the Gurkhas wherever they go support themselves and they support their families back home.

  Q50  Patrick Mercer: What is your view of the Government's intention that the Gurkha pension in Nepal allows for a very good standard of living in Nepal?

  Ms Lumley: That is not the evidence we have. If you look at the advertisements, which I am sure you are familiar with, from the Gurkha Welfare Trust, it says "Too proud to beg". It is not terrific. It is an existence. I would like to point out that 10,500 pensions are paid by charity. This is not pointing a finger at this particular Government. I would like also to say that successive Labour and Conservative governments in the past have not dealt with the Gurkhas fairly. So it is with all credit to this particular administration that this was the first one to recognise the Gurkha dilemma as it were, although they picked on the rather spurious date of Hong Kong because they were based in Hong Kong. They could have been based anywhere.

  Q51  Patrick Mercer: I was just trying to work out when Gurkhas started being based in this country in any great numbers. Can you remind me?

  Ms Lumley: 1997 was the time when the base in Hong Kong was closed.

  Q52  David Davies: My default position is basically the same as yours in that I always tend to support the Armed Forces and the Police in most matters. What do you say to people who say that there has been a bargain here, the Gurkhas have been remunerated very well by comparison to the salaries they could have got in Nepal and now they are asking for something that was not in the original bargain? More pertinently, what is going to happen if it becomes more expensive than or as expensive to train recruits, pay and then resettle those soldiers as it would for soldiers serving in a British regiment? Does it not possibly mean the end of the Gurkhas?

  Ms Lumley: I do not think it will mean the end of the Gurkhas because I believe it is of great pride to serve in the British Army. They have far more applications than they need.

  Q53  David Davies: Plenty of people want to become Gurkhas, but the British Government may decide it is too expensive to keep a regiment on.

  Ms Lumley: I think it is odd to say that they are so poor that we need pay them less. I do not think this is something that stands up in today's society. I must just point out that we have had a lot of very detailed letters since the campaign started last year from people all around the country who have said literally this: whatever it costs, however much we owe them in pensions, however many of them may come here, however many beds they take up in the National Health Service, we want them all here. It is a debt of honour.

  Q54  David Davies: Absolutely. Do not get me wrong, I agree. That might have been applied to Gurkhas up to now, but if it becomes more expensive to recruit, train and pay a Gurkha than somebody from Liverpool who wants to join the Mersey Regiment then which regiment is more likely to be shut down as a result of cuts in the future MoD budget?

  Madan Gurung: For example, if the Commonwealth soldiers join they serve only for four years and the Gurkhas want to serve more than four years, which they are doing now. The Gurkhas were given 15 years' service although they want to do 22 years or 30 years. Today what we are hearing is that the Gurkha soldiers are expensive as they will be spending money on giving them the courses they need for the Army, but they will serve for 22 years, this is guaranteed. Commonwealth soldiers, where they have been spending money to train them as a soldier, it is such a lot of money, only serve for four years. How can you compare the two?

  Q55  Tom Brake: What would it take figuratively speaking for the Kukri to be returned to its scabbard? Where does this campaign end?

  Ms Lumley: Parity for the Gurkhas, for the pre-1997 Gurkhas to get the same rights as the post-1997 Gurkhas.

  Q56  Tom Brake: That is across the board in terms of all entitlements? We have heard from the Defence Minister concerns over pensions.

  Ms Lumley: Entitlements and opportunities. Again we go back to the figure of 36,000 which we believe is a scare figure. Mr Woolas was saying at one stage in excess of 100,000 people. We think that scare tactics have been employed here. We stick to our guns and say equal rights for the Gurkhas, parity with Commonwealth soldiers. It does not seem so extreme when you put it like that.

  Q57  Tom Brake: Do you already have the next phase of your campaign planned and, if so, what do you perceive to be the next phase?

  Ms Lumley: I have been setback slightly. I did not think we would have to have another campaign or a furtherance of this campaign. It seemed to me pretty comprehensive about what the decisions were. I do not know what I have to do. I do not know who else I go to now. We have gone to the High Courts, we have gone to the press, we have gone to the people of the country and we have gone to Parliament. If that is not enough, who do we go to? All of those people have backed the Gurkhas but somehow the laws have not been changed. So who do we go to next? The Royal Family is now allowed to be included, although I personally have had a letter of support. I do not understand democracy if this is not what democracy is.

  Q58  Chairman: Ms Lumley, let me reassure you. When the Minister gave evidence he gave an invitation to this Select Committee to work with the Government in order to fashion the new proposals and that is what, not anticipating my colleagues, we are likely to do. You have heard the timetable about clearing the backlog which will be the end of May and then the new proposals will come forward. They will come to this Committee. This is what the Minister said. Then we will publish a report on that. We will do it will very quickly indeed because we know that time is of the essence. We will certainly take up the comments that you have made about New Delhi. In fact we will write to the Home Secretary today about whether or not this is happening in Delhi. As far as meetings are concerned, have you met with either the Home Secretary or the Defence Secretary to discuss these matters?

  Ms Lumley: I met the Home Secretary last November. I wrote and asked for a meeting. I went on my own because I was not allowed to take anybody. I spoke for half an hour.

  Q59  Chairman: Have you met anyone else, like the Defence Secretary or the Prime Minister?

  Ms Lumley: I wrote to the Prime Minister three times asking for meetings but I am afraid my letter was not acknowledged.

  Q60  Chairman: Do you think such a meeting would be helpful?

  Ms Lumley: Yes.

  Chairman: Ms Lumley and Mr Gurung, thank you very much for coming to give evidence today. I can assure you that this remains a priority for this Committee. We will take up the Minister's offer. We may well ask you to come back to see us again to look at the proposals that are fashioned. Thank you very much for coming in.