UK Nationals in the EU: Rights

Roger Gale Excerpts

Tuesday 12th September 2017 Westminster Hall

[Sir Roger Gale (North Thanet) (Con)]

I apologise, Mr Streeter. I mean no discourtesy to the hon. Member for Cambridge (Daniel Zeichner), the Opposition spokesman, my hon. Friend the Minister or you, but the curse of conflicting appointments has landed on me, and I must be elsewhere at 3.30. I will stay and hear as much as I can of the debate in the meantime.

I am acutely aware of the importance of the EU citizens employed in my constituency. If I removed the EU citizens among the ancillary staff in my hospital—never mind the highly qualified surgeons and others—the hospital would shut. If I removed the equivalent people from the care homes in my constituency, those would shut. If I removed the Lithuanian bakers from Speciality Breads, an excellent and award-winning company in my constituency, that company would have great difficulty finding replacements. The largest greenhouse complex in Europe is in my constituency. It is the size of about six football pitches and grows tomatoes hydroponically, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Those tomatoes are harvested by Poles and Romanians. Why? Despite my requests and the company’s endeavours, it cannot recruit British labour to do the job, not because of price but because it is hard work and there are not enough people available to do it.

I accept entirely the arguments about the necessary people—not merely the highly qualified and skilled, but the semi-skilled and unskilled—from the European Union and beyond who work, live, enjoy life and pay taxes in this country. However, this debate is about the plight—I use the word advisedly—of United Kingdom expat citizens living in what will be the remaining 27 member states of the European Union. Most of them are in France and Spain; significant numbers are in Italy and Greece, and there are many others dotted around.

There is an imbalance of about three to one between European Union citizens living in the United Kingdom and Brits living throughout the rest of the European Union. Moreover, the European Union citizens—by and large, but not exclusively—are working. The overwhelming majority of the UK citizens are retired, so they have much less room for manoeuvre, and they are very frightened people.

[Peter Grant (Glenrothes) (SNP)]

I have certainly seen evidence to suggest that the age profile of UK citizens living overseas is different from that of EU nationals living in the UK. What is the evidence for the hon. Gentleman’s assertion that the overwhelming majority of UK citizens in the rest of the EU are retired? I think those were his exact words.

[Sir Roger Gale]

I think I am right that the hon. Member for Ealing Central and Acton (Dr Huq) referred to the House of Commons Library, which provided those statistics, but my evidence is from my own eyes—

[Dr Huq]

The figures from the Library said that 21% of UK citizens in the rest of the EU are over 65, so that is not a majority. The 49% figure is for over-50s, who may be economically active and contributing, paying taxes and all those things.

[Sir Roger Gale]

I think we can accept—well, maybe we cannot, but I accept from personal knowledge—that most Brits who live in France outside Paris and in Spain outside Madrid, as the majority do, are not necessarily over retirement age but are retired or semi-retired. Some are working online. There is a significant number of them, and they are frightened people.

I have become involved because many years ago, under the last Labour Government, I had to fight a battle to secure payment of disability living allowance as an exportable benefit to UK citizens living in the European Union. That decision was taken by the European Commission. Shamefully, and in spite of the best efforts of the then Minister Jonathan Shaw—a very decent man and a personal friend—it took us a long time to secure the payment, but eventually it was made. Within the European Union, there is an understanding that certain benefits are exportable, mainly the disability living allowance—now the personal independence payment—attendance allowance and carer’s allowance. Mobility allowance is not a health benefit and therefore not exportable. That was another battle that we fought but lost.

A significant number of UK citizens are receiving those benefits throughout the European Union. Contrary to popular belief, they are not rich retired people living on yachts in Cannes sipping gin and lying in the sun. Generally, they have worked in the United Kingdom all their lives, paid their taxes and national insurance contributions and for whatever reason—perhaps health, or the climate—found it desirable to live in the Mediterranean or in France. They have no flexibility in their incomes, which have fallen quite dramatically because of the fall in the pound, as many of them are living on United Kingdom state retirement pensions and little else.

If I say to hon. Members that those people live in genteel poverty, I mean it. It is genteel because they have a roof over their heads and they own their property, but having sold up and moved out from the United Kingdom, they are now faced with a choice between a rock and a hard place. Do they stay and face losing perhaps their healthcare and certainly their exportable benefits?

[Kate Green]

I agree absolutely that there are no guarantees that UK citizens will continue to receive those benefits after exit, because many benefits depend on reciprocal arrangements. Is the hon. Gentleman saying, as I would, that the UK Government should now make it clear whether they intend to continue those benefits for UK citizens in the rest of the European Union after Brexit, irrespective of what the EU 27 decide in respect of their nationals?

[Sir Roger Gale]

I entirely support the Government’s line in respect of the need for a reciprocal deal.

[Kate Green]

So, no.

[Sir Roger Gale]

Not just no—it happens to be the case that many people who live in mainland Europe could not, for example, secure private healthcare insurance at their age, in any meaningful sense. That may not be the case for the 3 million people from the rest of the European Union living in the United Kingdom, many of whom are working. There is a disparity between the two causes.

I chair the all-party parliamentary group on frozen British pensions. As hon. Members will know, significant numbers of elderly people who paid their taxes in the United Kingdom all their lives have moved to Canada, Australia or New Zealand and found their pensions frozen at the point of departure because we have no reciprocal agreement. That is why this point is so important. We do have a reciprocal agreement with other countries, such as the United States, so pensions there are uprated. This results in the ludicrous situation in which a pensioner living in Canada on one side of the Niagara Falls has a frozen pension, but another on the other side of the falls, 200 yards across the river in the United States, has an uprated pension. There is a real danger that if we cannot reach a bilateral agreement with the 27 other member states, we could find ourselves with pensioners moving to or living in other countries in the European Union with frozen pensions.

These are significant issues. There are a significant number of frightened people who want and need answers urgently. I am aware that I have taken up a lot of time, and I apologise. I would welcome the opportunity to discuss these matters in person with my hon. Friend the Minister.

[Several hon. Members rose—]