Clause 1 - Removal of existing nationality requirements
Crown Employment (Nationality) Bill
4:30 pm
Mr Dominic Grieve (Shadow Attorney General, Home, Constitutional & Legal Affairs; Beaconsfield, Conservative)
I welcome you to the Chair, Mr. Gale. I assure the hon. Member for Hendon (Mr. Dismore) that I will try to be as brief as possible. As a result, I will split my comments in two: I shall deal first with the generality of clause 1 and secondly with my new clauses.
I listened carefully to what the hon. Gentleman had to say and I am sympathetic towards some of his aims. There is no doubt that our present system contains a number of slightly bizarre archaisms. He highlighted some of the anomalies that may result. Nevertheless, there is a foundation behind the rules, which seems to make perfectly good sense. A person employed as a civil servant must be seen to be capable of being a servant of the Crown and be able to discharge the duties to the Crown loyally and through that to the fellow citizens whom he is there to serve within the United Kingdom. My personal view is that that probably has more to do with a person's attitude than their nationality.
The hon. Gentleman made the point that Abu Hamza would make an unsuitable Crown servant. I am rather inclined to agree, irrespective of his nationality, even though I know that the Home Secretary is trying to deprive him of it. Equally, I can see that the public should have complete confidence that those who make decisions that can directly affect the way that the state deals with their fellow citizens act impartially and certainly without any motive of advantage or attachment to some other country that they might also be seeking to serve.
That point needs to be considered. Otherwise, there will be a danger that the public will perceive that people are taking jobs as civil servants simply because it is a job without recognising that a high standard of conduct is required when discharging it. They will attach xenophobic views if it turns out that the person who has failed to discharge those functions correctly is a foreign national who has been retained by the state itself. That is the basic issue. It is not one that the
Committee can simply gloss over and say that in the 21st century it does not matter any more. It does matter. That is why the Committee needs to consider it.
That said, I accept that the way that this has all come about, possibly as a result of the Act of Settlement, is slightly odd. The Act of Settlement was drafted as it was to prevent the King from having foreign advisers. That was regarded at the time, particularly in light of what had happened prior to that Act, as an important thing to do.
My background covers two countries: this one and a foreign one. It is right that dual nationals—which technically I could be, although I have never taken advantage of that opportunity—are in no way debarred from applying for a United Kingdom civil service job, even though they may have conflicting loyalties. I am even more mindful of the fact that, particularly on the European continent, there is a long tradition of foreigners taking up public service in another state. There is nothing new or modern about that. Anyone who reads history works on Russia in the early 19th century will know that the Russian army was full of foreign generals commanding it and that the Russian civil service was full of foreigners working in it. Indeed, I have a Grieve ancestor who was the physician to the Empress of Russia in the late 18th century. I am not sure that that was a civil service post, but it was certainly paid for by the Russian crown and I do not think that his British nationality was thought to make a bean of difference.
I shall give way to the hon. Member for Ealing, North (Mr. Pound). I want to give him an opportunity to have his pennyworth before I resume my place.