News / Military

Home Office and MoD accused of 'neglecting' former foreign soldiers

Monday, 09 March 2020 4:18 PM [ Last Update: Monday, 09 March 2020 4:18 PM ]

Soldiers from Fiji and other Commonwealth countries increasingly fill the ranks of the British army

In a case set to expose the British army’s exploitation of foreign soldiers, a group of veterans have lodged a legal complaint against both the Ministry of Defence (MoD) and the Home Office.

The complaint centres on alleged “systematic failure” to help the former soldiers with “complex” and “unaffordable” immigration rules on discharge from the armed forces.

The foreign ex-soldiers contend that the MoD’s and Home Office’s failure to help them led to their being classified as “illegal immigrants”, thus exposing them to a wide range of socio-economic disadvantages, including “unemployment” and “homelessness”.

As part of their legal action, the former soldiers are also arguing that they feared “deportation” after their discharge from the army.

The effort is being described as “unprecedented” on account of the fact it is a group action against two separate government departments.

The group action involves eight ex-soldiers from Fiji who have all served between seven and 12 years in the British army.

But it is widely believed that “hundreds” of ex-service personnel are similarly affected. Most of these former soldiers are from Commonwealth countries, which the MoD aggressively targets to fill human resource gaps in the army.

Leading British defence specialists have highlighted the gap between the MoD’s enthusiasm to recruit foreign soldiers from the Commonwealth and the poor or non-existent after-service care it provides them.

Given that the MoD has been seeking to draft more Commonwealth personnel into Britain's armed forces since Nov 2018 to mitigate recruitment crisis.... surely fixing these issues for men & women who serve should be a priority?https://t.co/e2UlcczzFR
— Lucy Fisher (@LOS_Fisher) March 9, 2020

More broadly, this case highlights the chronic manpower challenges faced by the British army – and to a lesser extent other branches of the armed forces – where young British nationals have by and large turned their backs on the military.

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