Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, with reference to paragraph 20 of her Department's policy paper Safeguarding the position of EU citizens in the UK and UK nationals in the EU, published on 26 June 2017, how an EU citizen with settled status returning to the UK after a two-year absence could prove strong ties to the UK in order to retain settled status.

The Government proposes that discretion be applied to those EU citizens for whom settled status would otherwise be lost after an absence from the UK of greater than two years, if they can demonstrate sufficiently strong ties to the UK. The aim is to protect groups such as (but not limited to) students and posted workers, who have lived most of their life in the UK and have only been abroad for more than two years because of the nature of their work, study or other circumstances, but plan to return to continue their life here.

The matter is subject to negotiation and we will publish further details in due course.