Premiership of Gordon Brown into further talks over the issue. Finally, after a Commons Home Affairs Committee meeting between campaigners, the Ministry of Defence and the Home Office on 19 May, Brown announced to the House of Commons on 20 May that the Home Secretary Jacqui Smith would make a statement on the issue the following day. Smith subsequently announced that all Gurkha veterans who had served four years or more in the British Army before 1997 would be allowed to settle in Britain. In the days following the release and high-profile return to Libya of Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset al-Megrahi in August 2009, speculation
Lockerbie Scrub Lockerbie Scrub Lockerbie Scrub is a 230 km area of closed forest and woodland, surrounded by open tropical savanna woodland, at the northern tip of the Cape York Peninsula in Far North Queensland, Australia. The Scrub consists of lowland rainforest, eucalypt tall open forest and closed eucalypt woodland. The rainforest type represented there is semi-deciduous notophyll vine forest. The climate is monsoonal with well-defined wet and dry seasons. Land tenure is mainly Aboriginal (Deed of Grant in Trust) land, with pockets of freehold around the communities of New Mapoon and Bamaga. Northern quolls, spectacled flying foxes and bare-backed fruit bats