Brown to sort out Gurkha ‘bun-fight’
By Alex Stevenson
Only Gordon Brown can resolve Gurkha tensions between the Home Office and the Ministry of Defence (MoD), Labour’s leading campaigner on the issue has said.
Martin Salter, who won key concessions from the government before its Commons defeat on the Gurkhas last week, said he was “pleased” the prime minister had taken “personal charge of the issue”.
He told politics.co.uk: “Quite frankly this bun-fight between the Ministry of Defence and the Home Office had to be resolved, and it could only really be the prime minister that could do it.”
Martin Salter describes campaigners’ negotiations with the government in the run-up to the Gurkhas vote:
Yesterday actress Joanna Lumley announced she trusted Mr Brown to ensure the government quickly changes policy after her hastily-arranged meeting with him in No 10.
Mr Salter said he welcomed her “dramatic announcement” and paid tribute to the “fantastic job” the Gurkha Justice Campaign have done in taking the issue to “the centre of public consciousness”.
“I’m beginning to wonder whether we should be handing even more areas of government policy to the cast of Absolutely Fabulous,” he mused.
The Reading West MP, who set up and chairs the all-party parliamentary group on Gurkha rights, singled out the MoD for criticism after his brush with veterans minister Kevan Jones in the home affairs committee on Tuesday.
“It was clear to me. that the Ministry of Defence are still stuck in some sort of timewarp,” he said.
“What was binding was the commitment that the policy that they had announced on the Friday had been effectively disowned by the Wednesday and would be rewritten by July. Not in MoD world it wasn’t.”
It took three attempts for Mr Salter to finally get MoD officials to admit that 85 per cent of Gurkhas retire before reaching the required 20 years’ service.
“As Hazel Blears said in her controversial article, no government finds itself on the [wrong] side of that British sense of fair play is going to find that a very comfortable place on which to perch,” he commented.
“It seems clear to me now the prime minister is quite keen to get off that perch and I am pleased at long last he has personally met with Joanna Lumley.”
Mr Salter’s negotiations with senior government figures in the run-up to last Wednesday’s vote led to the Home Office agreeing not to deport Gurkhas who failed to meet the residency requirements recently proposed by immigration minister Phil Woolas.
As a result of this concession he was one of the many Labour MPs who abstained from the Gurkha vote, giving the opposition victory.
Mr Salter said it was “ironic” the government, which had done more than any other to give Gurkhas settlement rights, had missed out on much of the credit for their work.
“There’s been a huge amount of progress in the last few days, but my God it’s been like pulling teeth and it shouldn’t have to have been like this,” he finished.
“I think when the dust is settled on this it will be a Labour government that delivers for the Gurkhas. But the amount of credit that will befall the government is going to be a lot less than it would have been had it been done more quickly, more sensible and. with the kind of compassion and sense of honour that we owe these brave guys.”
