Brexit: UK-EU Movement of People (EUC Report)

Earl of Kinnoull Excerpts

Monday 17th July 2017 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Kinnoull (CB)]

My Lords, it is, as ever, a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, who spoke with his customary passion and whose speech was filled with interesting thought.

I declare my interests as set out in the register of the House, and in particular those relating to farming in Scotland, where seasonal EU labour is a key component of success in what is, I regret, a very thinly profitable environment. I also remind the House that I am a member of the EU Select Committee and the Justice Sub-Committee.

This is a very important report and is one of 17 unanimous Brexit-related reports written in the 2016-17 Session. This work rate, involving as it does, 73 Members of your Lordships’ House and the 24 professional staff of the EU Select Committee, has been very intensive, and I, too, record the immense gratitude that I and all committee members have towards those staff. I hope the Minister will agree that the product has been of a consistently high standard and helpful to all sides involved in the process. Finally, I think the whole House would like to send our chairman, the noble Lord, Lord Boswell, our special messages and wish him a speedy return following his recent illness.

The importance of this report can be gauged in many ways, one of which is that in this first phase of the Brexit negotiations only three subjects are being discussed between the EU and the UK, and the movement of citizens and the rights acquired is one of them. As we know, this first phase is intended to conclude in October. In many cases, every day is carefully timetabled by the EU, with a purpose between now and then.

Last Wednesday the EU Select Committee was in Brussels and we had formal sessions with Mr Verhofstadt and, separately, M Barnier. The transcripts, which are interesting, will be available shortly. Naturally, the bulk of the discussions concerned the three subjects, as the EU’s position is that it will not proceed to phase 2 of the negotiations without there being “sufficient progress” in each of those three initial subject areas.

It was my impression that both the European Parliament team and the EU Commission team had read the EU Select Committee output generally, and in particular this report. They were able to quote from the report in meetings without referring to it. However, we were left with the impression that this was in part due to the paucity of the output from the Government and other parliamentary channels that they had been able to get hold of and read.

Quite a lot of feedback was given to us about this report and its sister report on acquired rights, which had been prepared by the Justice Sub-Committee—on which I sat—and which was debated recently, and about chapter 5 of the Government’s paper The United Kingdom’s Exit From and New Partnership with the European Union and the June government paper Safeguarding the Position of EU Citizens Living in the UK and UK Nationals Living in the EU. This feedback was generally consistent with the EU’s public position, but I felt that the body language indicated that the EU is happy to show some flexibility. However, clear blue water currently exists between us on the matter, so I would make just two points this afternoon.

First, it seems that substantial progress towards “sufficient progress” on this matter has been made, but there is more to be done, including on the part of the United Kingdom. In other words, both sides will need to develop their positions. It would be helpful to hear from the Minister on this point—in particular, that there is some flexibility in the United Kingdom’s position.

The second and, for me, much more important point concerns simplicity. The point was made to us very strongly in Brussels that future arrangements for travel and work between the EU 27 and the UK must be administratively easy—I suppose the word of the moment is “frictionless”. As I sat and listened to this, I felt that I could not agree more—70-plus-page forms for the farmers of Perthshire wanting to employ those very same people who have been so helpful for many years came to mind. I refer to the position set out by the noble Lord, Lord Cormack. I am in the vegetable business. It is not a high-skill business but, for safety reasons, you need people who are enormously experienced. That is very important, and there is not a cadre of people in the UK that we can get—in many instances people have been working with us for 20 years or so. I feel that it would be a terrific own goal of a large, unnecessary and damaging nature if we cannot solve this.

As the report states in paragraph 130:

“The employers’ organisations from whom we took evidence were uniformly opposed to the prospect of applying the UK’s current Points Based System to EU nationals”.


Later, that same paragraph states that the Institute of Directors gave evidence that:

“Visa applications typically take between three and eight months to process. The forms that an employer must fill out typically comprise about 100 questions and 85 pages for a visa”.


The NFU estimates that there are around 80,000 EU seasonal workers in the agricultural sector. There is currently only one concession that would allow an agricultural business to escape the points-based system for a potential employee: the concession for sheep-shearers. I feel, therefore, that the points-based system would be a disaster, and I cannot believe that it would be ready for a post-Brexit deluge.

According to the report’s figure 7, on page 39, 135,000 points-based visas were awarded in the year ending September 2016. So pumping 80,000 agricultural people in, to say nothing of the other industry sectors that would be involved—for example, in Scotland, we have a lot of seasonal people working in the hospitality industry—would, I am sure, produce an absolute horror. Making the process simple, attractive and easy for those concerned is something within our sole control and is, I submit, vital to the future prosperity of our nation. I would be very grateful if the Minister could give the House some reassurance on these points.

In closing, I salute my noble friend Lady Prashar and her committee on this excellent report, and praise the work and the thinking behind it.