CAMPAIGNING ACTRESS Joanna Lumley had Gordon Brown’s government in further retreat last night in the continuing row over UK settlement rights for former Gurkha soldiers.
In extraordinary scenes at an impromptu shared press conference in a Westminster restaurant, immigration minister Phil Woolas seemed reduced to rewriting policy on the hoof and in full view of the television cameras.
And the sense of a government finding itself hopelessly on the wrong side of public opinion deepened as Ms Lumley suggested she and her campaign group would be assisting the minister in the production of new guidelines determining how many Gurkha applicants will be allowed to settle in the UK.
Their face-to-face encounter in what amounted to a public negotiation came as Downing Street promised to change the guidelines after Ms Lumley’s furious reaction to the news that five test cases brought by veterans who served in the Falklands and the Gulf had been rejected by the Home Office.
Prime minister Gordon Brown’s spokesman said the letters sent to the five applicants had been sent under the “old criteria” – rejected by MPs in last week’s shock government defeat – and had no practical impact.
Mr Woolas likewise tried to assure Ms Lumley that the five had been rejected under the existing rules which ministers had already undertaken to review in light of last week’s Commons vote.
“This is not a letter of rejection,” Mr Woolas told Ms Lumley: “It was a letter explaining the legal process.”
In a stunning performance worthy of a seasoned politician, the hugely popular actress then attempted to define the next stage in that process, declaring: “I have met Mr Woolas now and I am reassured again. Because I know we are going to assist Mr Woolas in making the strongest guidelines possible.”
Ms Lumley met Mr Brown on Wednesday and declared herself confident the prime minister would “do the right thing” by the Gurkhas. And she revealed yesterday that Mr Brown had not known about the Home Office letters. “It seemed the prime minister didn’t know about them and I think he was very anxious because it is in direct contradiction of what were talking about [on Wednesday],” she said.
Liberal Democrat spokesman Chris Huhne said he was no more assured by Mr Woolas than he had been by Mr Brown, and accused the prime minister of presiding over “a monumental shambles in government”.
