Rights of EU Nationals

Debate between Lord Clarke of Nottingham and Joanna Cherry

Wednesday 19th October 2016 Commons Chamber

[Joanna Cherry]

I could not agree more with my hon. Friend.

[Mr Kenneth Clarke (Rushcliffe) (Con)]

rose—

--- Later in debate ---

[Joanna Cherry]

I am now going to try to make some progress, as I have taken a lot of interventions. I will be very happy to put Government Members right on a few points later, but at this stage I want to make some progress.

We would not expect the 1.2 million UK citizens who live in other EU countries to be treated as bargaining chips, and we would not expect the Governments of other EU countries to preside over a shocking rise in xenophobic hate crime, so the UK Government must accept their share of responsibility for what is going on in this country at the moment and stop fuelling division.

[Mr Clarke]

I entirely share the hon. and learned Lady’s sentiment that we all want to reassure people who are here, so we must be careful not to arouse a sense of insecurity among them. I do not know of any Member of this House in any party who wishes to remove EU nationals who are now lawfully here and making their lives here. I have never met a European politician from any country—I have met quite a lot of them—who wishes to remove British nationals who have settled down there, as the hon. Member for Central Ayrshire (Dr Whitford) pointed out. We are having a rather artificial debate here. Would it not be best if this were all sorted out at the summit tomorrow, with the leaders quickly agreeing among themselves that neither side would seek, in any negotiations, to remove nationals lawfully living in their respective territories?

[Joanna Cherry]

I always listen to the right hon. and learned Gentleman with great care, because he has made an amazing contribution to the debate about the European Union over the years. However, this is not an artificial debate. I hate to disillusion him, but a Conservative and Unionist party colleague of his in Scotland, a Member of the Scottish Parliament, suggested recently in a press release sanctioned by the Conservative and Unionist party that EU citizens living in Scotland should not have the same right to participate in civil society as others—for the record, that person was referring to a French national who lives in Scotland and was previously a Member of the Scottish Parliament—so it is a very real concern.