I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that excellent point. I entirely agree about the contribution of foreign and Commonwealth soldiers to our armed forces—not only in the second world war as she mentions, but in the first world war. In all major military endeavours between those times and since, such soldiers, with close links to this country—and, indeed, the ancillary staff without which no army, air force or ship goes into battle—have made a very important contribution. I am very grateful to my hon. Friend for her point.
It was Claudius, the first Roman emperor to be born outside Italy, who introduced Roman citizenship for the retiring auxiliary soldier and all his children. In exchange for 25 years of honourable service, a veteran was given a double-sided bronze plaque, which granted him citizenship and a few other particular privileges, such as the right to marry—I will not go into recent issues relating to marriage in detail today; I suspect that in Roman times that meant traditional marriage.
Our immigration laws today are modelled on very different principles, and rightly so. There is no automatic right to citizenship from service in the armed forces. It is right and fair that cases should be looked at on their individual merits, but we can certainly all agree that military service should not be grounds for disadvantage in this process. There is an important principle at stake: when soldiers have risked their lives serving in the British armed forces abroad, no member of the armed forces family should be at any disadvantage in the provision of public or commercial services, or in the eyes of the law, especially not with regard to citizenship. That is what is enshrined in our armed forces covenant, and that is what the Bill seeks to do with regard to the path to citizenship. No soldier or former soldier should be penalised when applying for citizenship because they have been serving our country abroad.
There is currently a requirement that applicants for UK citizenship must have been in the UK on the date five years before an application for naturalisation. That requirement disadvantages a member of Her Majesty’s armed forces who was on an overseas posting at the relevant time. There is already a provision to waive the requirement in Crown service cases—which would include service in Her Majesty’s forces—but that applies only to those who are still in service and still overseas when they apply, and in practice it is applied only on an exceptional basis.