Crown Employment (Nationality) Bill
12th June 2009
Nick Hurd supports a Private Member's Bill to remove restrictions on the employment of foreign nationals in the civil service.
Mr. Nick Hurd (Ruislip-Northwood) (Con): On this groundhog day, may I, too, start by congratulating the new Minister on her appointment? I am sure our future exchanges will be more focused on the role of government in unlocking the potential of the third sector to help more people, but today we are rightly focused on what is a stubborn Bill, and I congratulate the hon. Member for Hendon (Mr. Dismore), not least for his tenacity. I have always been grateful to him because he showed relative benevolence to my private Member’s Bill, which became the Sustainable Communities Act 2007, although I suspect that that generosity had something to do with the fact that his own Bill was next on the Order Paper. I have always been grateful that he kept his assassin’s dagger in its sheath that day and I wish him well with this Bill. I congratulate him on the speech that he delivered, but there is no surprise in that because he has delivered it enough times. I suspect that he could recite it in his sleep, and the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath) could probably do the same. We believe that the Bill deserves to receive a Second Reading.
Like the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome, who speaks for the Liberals, Conservative Members regret that today we are looking at just one small corner of the painting and not at the wider canvas of the role and status of the civil service. We have consistently stated our view that this reform should be placed in the larger context of a civil service Act that defines the role of the civil servant in law. That has been promised since 1997 and is yet to be delivered. At a time when public confidence in the way in which we are governed is at such a low ebb, the case for such an Act grows even stronger. We now look to the Constitutional Renewal Bill to deliver it and we urge the Government to get on with it. I recognise the argument that private Members’ Bills should be focused on relatively modest and concise objectives, and we accept that the principle of this Bill is right.
The law on who is eligible to work in the civil service is rooted in a different age and it is complex, it has been amended on many occasions and, unsurprisingly, it is a mess. It throws up plenty of anomalies, and those were described well by the hon. Member for Hendon. They must be irritating to work with and the provisions are no longer rooted in any logic. Foreign nationals can be employed by the Crown abroad, if that is considered appropriate, but in the UK non-reserved jobs are limited to Commonwealth citizens, British protected persons and nationals of European Union member states. In 2009, it makes no sense that someone from Nigeria can apply for a job in the civil service here, but someone from the United States cannot do so. In the past, the law might have been justified by concerns about securing allegiance to the Crown, but that justification evaporated with the relaxing of eligibility for members of the EU. In any case, the oath of loyalty to the Crown is now a question of contract, above all, and the Bill does nothing to change the right of Ministers to reserve sensitive posts for UK nationals.
There appears to be an opportunity cost to this muddle, because at a time when we want to be attracting the brightest and best to the civil service and we want our public servants genuinely to reflect modern Britain and its growing ethnic complexity, not least in London—I, too, am a Greater London MP, so I entirely endorse what the hon. Gentleman is saying in this context—it makes no sense to leave a group of people totalling 800,000, on his numbers, outside the tent. All those people have a legitimate right to be here to make a contribution in appropriate roles. We think they should be given that chance and we are therefore happy for the Bill to be receive a Second Reading.
