EU Settlement Scheme

Rosie Winterton Excerpts

Wednesday 7th July 2021 Commons Chamber

[Ian Murray]

No, it was not devolved; the UK Government implemented that policy at the insistence of the Scottish First Minister who brought it forward.

In 2019, the Prime Minister famously promised to get Brexit done, yet here we are, 18 months after his Government’s election with a majority, still debating the details of these schemes more than five years after the referendum, with many EU nationals still living in limbo. The Government have not got it done, and will never get it done as they promised the public they would. We need to be getting Brexit to work properly. The EU settlement scheme is another example of where many people are falling through the gaps, with the Government unable to contact them and get them into the scheme.

I say again, regretfully, that we will not be able to back the motion. I hope that the Government will listen to charities or to the shadow Home Secretary, my right hon. Friend the Member for Torfaen (Nick Thomas-Symonds), and even now extend the deadline for the thousands of EU citizens who have failed to submit their applications on time through no fault of their own. I hope the Minister will be able to tell us how many EU citizens living in the UK the Home Office believes have not managed to apply on time, and what the Department is doing about finding and contacting them and getting them to apply on time. It is particularly important for the Home Office to contact proactively those citizens who are either vulnerable or hard to reach as a result of issues such as a lack of internet access, or who do not think the scheme applies to them because they have been here for so long. I hope the Minister can reassure us that the applications of the nearly half a million people who submitted them before 30 June will be concluded as quickly as possible.

What is missing from these debates is the fact that those affected are our neighbours, our friends, our partners, our colleagues and our fellow citizens. They are human beings, not numbers on a Home Office screen. Those are the people who have chosen to make this country—our home—their home. Together, we make this country our home. As we chart the next phase of our country’s history, we would do well to remember that we are talking about human beings and we need to make sure that the scheme works for them all.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

I remind the House that if colleagues’ speeches are between four and five minutes, we should be able to get everybody in.

[Craig Williams (Montgomeryshire) (Con)]

I shall take that guidance to heart, Madam Deputy Speaker. With your leave, before I wade in, I wish to pay tribute to my parliamentary team, because it is with great sadness that I report to the House that my constituency office was attacked this morning. I pay tribute to the police for dealing with it incredibly quickly. Luckily, those involved did not gain entry, but they did break 16 panes of glass and, of course, scared the parliamentary team. Across the House, our teams work day in, day out without, necessarily, the protection that this House affords us now. I put on the record my thanks to my team and the police for dealing with the situation so quickly. However, life goes on, and I will now contribute to this important debate.

Although I very much welcome the tone of the hon. Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East (Stuart C. McDonald) and many of the observations that he made in opening, we need to be incredibly careful about getting our language and tone right to remind all EU citizens who have been living, contributing, working and loving in this country that they are very welcome to stay. We need to reflect on the scale of the achievement of getting 6 million-plus applications. When the Minister sums up, I look forward to him giving us the stats to date, which he will have to hand easier than I. At my last check, 5.4 million had been settled. That is a huge achievement, and it is against the background of the last five years, with huge constitutional arguments and with political parties in this place telling people that they could stop Brexit and causing confusion on a huge scale about what the relationship would look like next.

As a result of what the Government have put in place, and what I ensure in my constituency, people in Wales and the whole of the United Kingdom feel welcome and understand the importance of applying. I very much welcome the tone from the Minister in responding to the debate, and the proportionality that he is now applying to anyone who gets their application in late. It seemed to me that what he outlined in opening was pretty much what the SNP is calling for: proportionality. Clearly, we needed a date to work to, and we needed to get the message out to apply, but I very much welcome the proportional response to those who may have got their application in late.

I want it to go on the record that in a previous life I worked very much on the detail of the withdrawal agreement and the generous package that the UK Government put in place. This is the most generous settlement scheme in the whole of the EU—hon. Members should look at the withdrawal agreement. I am happy to be intervened on by anyone on the Opposition Benches if they can tell me of a country in the European Union that has a more generous settlement scheme package for UK citizens than we have for EU citizens. We have gone above and beyond to ensure that people feel welcome, and we need to ensure that the language and tone are right in this Chamber to reinforce that message.

I am conscious of time, Madam Deputy Speaker, and I do not want to make you impose a limit, but I will comment on the proposed introduction of a border. It disappoints me. I join the shadow Secretary of State, the hon. Member for Edinburgh South (Ian Murray), in looking forward to the day when a motion from the SNP does not try to cause a border for our Celtic cousins. Never mind England and Scotland; you are trying to put a border between Wales and Scotland. We do not want that. We do not want you to leave the Union. You have made some fair points, but adding that last sentence with a demand for a border between Scotland and the rest of the United Kingdom shows your hand, I am afraid. It shows that this debate is more about political point scoring than creating the welcome that you are trying to.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

Order. Just a reminder to speak through the Chair, rather than directly to other Members. There is a very good reason why that is how we do things here.

[Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP) [V]]

This is a debate that I wish we did not need to have, not just because I find it abhorrent that people who made their home here are now faced with proving their right to stay, but because the UK Government have, true to form, made an absolute moger of the process—removing the safety barriers so that people now risk falling off the cliff edge into the shark-infested waters of the hostile environment.

I have had constituents getting in touch about the scheme for some time now, anxious about what it might mean for them. Delays in the scheme, which have been highlighted recently, are nothing new in the experience of my constituents in Glasgow Central. In October 2019, a constituent made his application to the EU settlement scheme and found out that he had been granted pre-settled status only in June 2020. Another applied in June 2019 and although his wife was granted status almost immediately, he was waiting until February 2021, having been moved into the “complicated” pile. A further constituent applied in December 2020 and was granted status only in June this year. All these delays cause considerable stress to individuals. I appreciate that there are checks, processes and wheels turning slowly in the background, but the UK Government knew this was coming. They were warned on multiple occasions by a wheen of organisations and experts that layering this on top of an already struggling immigration system would cause problems, yet it feels from the experience of my constituents that nothing was done.

There are also uncertainties and grey areas. People who have never had to question their right to live here are now having to do so. A constituent and friend of mine, Toni Guigliano, has lived most of his life in Scotland. He considers himself a dual national—an Italian Scot—but his ID for work purposes was an Italian passport, so he has had to apply for settled status to ensure he is able to continue to live his life here. He is certain there will be many others like him who do not believe they need to apply. To make matters worse, the EU settlement scheme helpline told him he did not absolutely need to apply, but that was contradicted by an email I received from UK Visas and Immigration today, which would suggest that he does, as his Italian passport is not proof of a right to work. What an absolute shambles!

The lack of a physical document has been raised by many constituents as a deficiency in the scheme. Relying on having a mobile phone with battery sufficiently charged to allow someone to get through the border as they come back from their holidays is far from ideal for most people. For the digitally excluded, this is also a real problem. For those required to prove eligibility to their employer or a whole host of Government agencies, the digital systems appear not yet to be in place or working properly, as constituents have already found and as my hon. Friend the Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East (Stuart C. McDonald) highlighted. In a response to me from the Minister for Future Borders and Immigration, it was evident that the “view and prove” service is not yet working on a cross-Government basis. In the letter, he stated that, for individuals accessing services provided by Departments and other public authorities,

“e.g. benefits and healthcare, the Home Office will increasingly make the relevant information about an individual’s status available automatically through system to system checks, at the point at which they seek to access the public services.”

Although I understand this may be working to an extent in the Department for Work and Pensions, Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs and NHS England, that is not by any matter or means the full spectrum of services that people interact with. A system should be in place right now, not at some vague time in the future. It is yet another reason to remove or extend the deadline if the UK Government have not even finished their own homework on this issue.

There are further consequences for EU nationals as a result of the Tories’ Brexit shambles. Another constituent who has lived in Scotland since May 2016 has been allocated pre-settled status and has applied for settled status. He has always worked, but he lost his job in hospitality in early 2020 and went to stay with family in Italy, unfortunately getting stuck there during the lockdown. His universal credit claim was refused as he was not in the UK, and he could not apply for jobs, not knowing when he would be able to return to his home in Glasgow. As a result, he is now struggling to get by, destitute until he gets an answer, because he has been unable to claim his benefits with pre-settled status. He told me:

“For me this situation is really distressing. I feel really discriminated and humiliated from this government. They are killing my hopes and my dreams.”

I have encountered other cases where the DWP has raised questions over EU nationals’ eligibility and unfairly denied benefits on the basis of the habitual residency test. This should not be the future EU nationals face; the vast majority work and contribute but, as we all know, anyone can require to access support because of the loss of a job or illness. They should not face barriers in their path, in the way that no recourse to public funds already causes destitution and serious harm to so many.

Another compelling reason to extend the deadline is the bureaucratic backlog caused by coronavirus. A constituent who came to the UK in July 2020 has been completely stuck due to agencies being closed—understandably—because of covid-19. She was not able to get a national insurance number, as the jobcentres were closed, or a job, because so many places were not hiring. She was also not able to register with a GP, set up a bank account or obtain a UK driving licence. Now she faces having her claim refused because she cannot absolutely prove she was in the UK before December 2020. So I ask how the Minister expects people to prove their rights when the very agencies we would all expect to assist have not been available to people.

Similarly, another constituent seeking to register his children under the EU settlement scheme found it more difficult, as their passports had expired and renewals were more difficult due to covid. Although I appreciate that passports were not always required to register, I am sure that many others would have found themselves in similar circumstances, panicking as the deadline approached. I hope that this will be taken into account as a “reasonable excuse”, but if there had not been a deadline, that would have removed a great deal of anxiety from the situation.

The future of work for EU nationals is undoubtedly now more complex. The situation has made it more difficult to travel and work, and many may now choose to move elsewhere as a result. We have all benefited from the talent and expertise of EU nationals and the all-round contribution they have made to our communities, but what the UK Government have sought to do through Brexit and through these rules is to make life harder for our friends and neighbours. As the MP with the highest immigration case load in Scotland, I can tell Members that life is already pretty hard for many people and that the UK Government’s utterly despicable Nationality and Borders Bill seeks to make the situation even worse.

Scotland did not vote for this. We voted to remain in the EU. We see the benefits of migration, as a nation who have sent our own out around the world, and we stand by those who have done us the honour of choosing Scotland as their home. I look forward to the day soon when we are able not only to show people our Scottish hospitality, but to have the legislation to back that up.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

Order. Just another reminder that if we think of each other, everyone can get in, but I did say between four and five minutes.