The short answer is that I do not know, but the Minister is sitting here, and no doubt he does know. What I will say is that although the private Member’s Bill procedure is often criticised, private Members' Bills are in fact scrutinised much more closely than Government Bills. The British Nationality Act was a large and important measure, but I am not a great believer in the conspiracy theory of history. I do not think that anyone in the Home Office wanted to disadvantage the armed forces. I am a believer in the cock-up theory of history, and if my hon. Friend wants my honest opinion, I think that that anomaly was simply a cock-up. Now it is being righted. That is what this procedure is all about.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Woking said, it is not right that the applications of people who put their lives on the line should be refused when the very reason for their absence is that we, the British Government—we, the British people—sent them overseas to protect our country. Why the anomaly arose I do not know, but it seems absurd to me, and that is why I think that the Bill, although narrow, is important.
The Minister has said:
“Making this change was a priority commitment under the Armed Forces Covenant. I am delighted to support this Bill which will ensure service men and women are not disadvantaged.”
So the Minister is on side. As has been mentioned, Veterans Aid is also on side, and put it very well when it said:
“Veterans Aid, more than any other military charity, has championed the cause of Foreign and Commonwealth servicemen and women, disadvantaged, through no fault of their own, by bureaucracy that is demonstrably at odds with the Military Covenant.”
The Army Families Federation has said:
“This legislation will make a big difference to the many soldiers and their spouses who are currently prohibited from applying for Citizenship because they were serving overseas or were on operations at the start the 5-year residential period.”
So this is clearly an important Bill, and it is clearly widely supported.
This Second Reading debate offers us an opportunity to try to tease out more information from the Minister about exactly how many people will be affected, how much further we can go in terms of the military covenant, and how we can improve morale and recruitment. A considerable number of people will potentially be involved. As of 1 April last year, 8,510 of the 166,110 members of the trained UK regular forces were non-British, constituting
approximately 5.1% of our nation’s armed forces. That is quite a lot. It would be interesting to hear from the Minister whether he thinks that it is the right number, and what is the Government’s policy on recruitment.
I am not sure that I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope), who intimated earlier that perhaps there were too many foreign nationals serving in our forces. The Minister, who is far more knowledgeable than me, will be able to confirm or correct that, but I suspect that the 5.1% figure is fairly constant. It seems a reasonably healthy percentage, but one would not want it to rise too far. It is important, particularly in times of economic difficulty and high unemployment, for our armed forces to consist overwhelmingly of British citizens.
Of those 8,510 forces, about 520 were Nepalese, and nearly 8,000 were citizens of the Republic of Ireland or Commonwealth countries. About 4.5% of the armed forces intake at the end of 2011 consisted of black and ethnic-minority personnel. I may be wrong about this, but according to my research, there are currently no statistics stating how many non-British members of the UK regular forces currently desire to gain British citizenship. I suspect that the number is relatively low. My hon. Friend the Member for Woking mentioned a figure, but I do not know where he found it. Even if the number who will be affected is only in the low hundreds, I do not think that that necessarily means that the Bill is unimportant. It is the principle, rather than the number involved, that is important.