It’s been a fairly hectic period, notwithstanding the very welcome May Bank Holiday weekend which saw my beloved Reading Royals fail to take advantage of a wonderful opportunity to get back into the Premiership without suffering the vagaries of the playoffs. Last Monday saw me raising the issue of Labour’s expansion of nursery provision in Reading and Berkshire on the floor of the House, on Tuesday I was at Home Affairs Committee hearing powerful evidence from the mother of murdered London teenager Stephen Lawrence, before chairing a meeting of environmental organisations concerned about water quality in Britain.

I spent the evening collecting signatures for my Early Day Motion criticising the Government’s recently announced new guidelines for the settlement of former Gurkha soldiers. The Motion, which received the unanimous support of the Select Committee, described the guidelines as “unnecessarily restrictive, morally wrong, and offensive to those dedicated Gurkha soldiers who are denied the opportunity to serve for the twenty year minimum period.” It went on to call upon the Government to “withdraw these guidelines and bring forward a new and more equitable ruling.”

By Wednesday morning, I and  a number of other colleagues were sending out emails to three hundred Labour MPs urging them to withhold their support from the Government in the division lobbies later that afternoon unless we were promised a policy rethink. Pressure mounted during the day, not least thanks to the Speaker giving me the opportunity to raise at Prime Minister’s Question Time the appalling prospect of former Gurkha soldiers who did not meet the criteria being deported from Britain. By 2pm the Government’s position was shifting and after intense negotiations we got them to commit to review the policy (yet again!) before the summer recess in July and to promise that there will be no deportations of Gurkhas currently in Britain fighting their cases. At 3pm I addressed several hundred Gurkhas outside Parliament and told them the good news. None of this stopped the Government losing the symbolic vote later that afternoon but it is clear now that we are well on the way to getting justice for Gurkhas at last.

This week, at the Home Affairs Committee, we returned to the Gurkha issue and it was my job to demolish some of the ridiculous figures that have been put about regarding the cost to the taxpayer and the likely number of Gurkhas and their dependents who could choose to settle in Britain. Most of the Gurkhas I know work hard, pay taxes, and make a valuable contribution to our economy. This is over and above the debt we already owe them for preparing to risk their lives for our country.