On Friday mornings, Members of Parliament naturally have many other things to do in their constituencies and we therefore all accept that the Chamber is not swarming with Members, but there are many people outside watching this debate on television, including many in the armed forces, and they will see this as totemic and they will be looking at Members of Parliament doing their best to try to get rid of the little irritants of service life one by one. I therefore think what we are doing today is important and should not be underestimated.
I was in the House during the passage of the 1981 Act, but I do not have any close recollection of its passage; after all, there have been so many Acts of Parliament over the years. Clearly, however, something went wrong with it in respect of the issue we are addressing. It specifies certain residence requirements for naturalisation for British citizenship. It states that one requirement is that the applicant
“was in the United Kingdom at the beginning of the period of five years ending with the date of the application”.
That would seem to be entirely sensible.
Can the Minister also explain the thinking behind other requirements? My hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope) mentioned one of his constituents who was married to an English person and has been disadvantaged by this Act. It is not only service personnel who are disadvantaged. Will the Minister take this opportunity to explain the thinking behind this provision and others?
The Act also specifies the number of days the applicant is allowed to be absent during the five-year qualifying period. The Act gives the Secretary of State the power to waive some of the residence requirements if there are “special circumstances”, however. This discretion is applied in applications involving non-British members of the armed forces. Time spent serving in the UK or overseas can count towards the qualifying residence period. However, it does not permit the Secretary of State to waive the requirement to be physically present in the UK on the first day of the qualifying period ending with the date of the application. One must assume that, contrary to what my hon. Friend the Member for Central Devon said, there was some rationale behind that. Given that the Secretary of State appears to have quite wide discretion, I am interested to know why no discretion was given in this particular case.