Veterans row as ‘big a scandal as Windrush’

THE QC representing Commonwealth veterans suing the Government over their immigration status has warned of repercussions on the scale of the Windrush scandal.

Anthony Metzer, head of chambers at Goldsmith Chambers, said he anticipates that the case he is pursuing against the Home Office and the Ministry of Defence for what he claims is a failure to inform Fijian servicemen and women of the correct processes to retain legal immigration status will have major ramifications.

“We expect the case to go to court and to have repercussions on the scale of the Windrush scandal,” Mr Metzer told The Sunday Telegraph. “The veterans are being forced to pay extortionate fees to retain their legal immigration status in the UK, despite being promised an indefinite right to remain when they were initially recruited.”

Mr Metzer, 56, said: “We have people in this country who are not British, who have felt that they could trust in our institutions and that they would do right by them. They are now shocked to realise that their status is much less secure and perhaps less valued than they previously thought.”

Mr Metzer’s comments come after The Telegraph revealed that MPs had called on the MoD to “urgently resolve” the Right to Remain issue for Commonwealth veterans.

A spokesman for the MoD said it makes “clear to foreign and Commonwealth recruits into the forces the process by which they and their families can attain settlement in the UK, and the costs involved”.