Clause 1
Crown Employment (Nationality) Bill
10:15 am
Greg Knight (East Yorkshire, Conservative)
Listening to the debate, what is emerging is that the hon. Member for Hendon, who is presenting the Bill, has logic on his side. I congratulate him for getting this far with this measure, because the aspect of our existing law that troubles me is that the Chinese wife of a French national could be employed here as a civil servant and yet the Chinese wife of a British citizen could not. I understand that that is the legal position. That has caused many of my hon. Friends and, indeed, many Members from all parts of the House to conclude that we should have this Bill.
The measure that allows a French national’s wife to be employed here is the European Community (Employment in the Civil Service) Order 1991, which amended an earlier Act to allow nationals of member states of the European Community and their spouses, as well as certain children, to take up civil employment under the Crown. So I can understand why many members of the Committee are saying that we should support the Bill, because of this powerful and logical argument. But of course, there is another way forward, and it is the way forward that my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley would no doubt support. We could discard the Bill and seek to put in place arrangements to pull out of the European Union, thereby bringing logic back to the existing situation. I hope that my hon. Friend, whom I believe is a member of the Better Off Out campaign, will tell us how that could be done.
So, in my very brief contribution to this debate, I should like to say that the hon. Member for Hendon may have logic on his side, but that does not mean that we should support the Bill.