Joanna Lumley's Gurkha campaign

From BBC News 31 July 2011: "Two years ago actress Joanna Lumley helped Gurkhas who retired before 1997 win the right to settle in the UK. Gurkha welfare groups and the Home office estimate that about 8,000 former soldiers and their families have since moved to Britain. But many have struggled in the UK, as the BBC's Alastair Lawson reports.

Nowhere can the influx of Gurkhas into Britain be more clearly seen than in the British military town of Aldershot.

The local authority estimates that one in 10 of the town's 90,000 residents comes from Nepal - many as a direct result of the campaign Ms Lumley helped lead.

If the British Gurkha Welfare Society (BGWS) is to be believed, Joanna Lumley's campaign has been a disaster, resulting in thousands of elderly and infirm Gurkha pensioners - most unable to speak English - living in poor accommodation and relying on state handouts to survive.

The actress herself has broken a strictly-observed silence over criticisms of her campaign to release a statement to the BBC.

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Joanna Lumley's statement

We should remember that there would be no Great Britain, no National Health Service and no welfare state were it not for the blood spilt by Gurkhas and others to protect this country in much darker and more dangerous times than those we face now.

Time and time again during the campaign ordinary people would stop me in the street and plead with me not to give up, as they could see that what we asked for on behalf of the Gurkhas was just and fair.

All other foreign and Commonwealth soldiers had the right to settle in Britain, regardless of the cost to this country: but only the pre-1997 retired Gurkhas were denied this right.

I joined the campaign because my father served as a regular soldier with the Gurkhas, and being a "daughter of the regiment" I understood more than most what sacrifices the Gurkhas and their families had made to protect this country from tyranny.

The British people are fair-minded, and they believe in loyalty to close friends. I am just grateful that I had a small part to play in helping these fine men and their families.

• How have Lumley's Gurkhas fared?

"Our campaign had moral right on our side," the statement said, "and the vast majority of the British public wanted the government to amend the law to allow Gurkhas to settle in the UK.

"Debts of honour are not easy to translate or quantify into pounds and pence, and some MPs have criticised our campaign for not considering the potential financial impact on the exchequer. Yet the government did consider this at the time, and decided that our campaign arguments vanquished the issues of pure cost."

Ms Lumley's supporters insist that her campaign successfully reversed decades of discrimination against older Gurkhas who fought for the British army yet were denied the right to retire in the UK.

But the BGWS argues that it would be far more cost-effective if retired Gurkhas were paid better pensions and encouraged to stay in Nepal rather than pursue the more expensive option of emigrating to the UK to take advantage of state pensions, housing benefit and free health care."

In our view, not only would it be more cost effective, but the retired Gurkhas would be much better off and happier.  A £ goes much, much further in Nepal than in Surrey!

This is another case of well intentions translated by the Lay of Unintended Consequences into something not quite what was intended.