Citizens’ Rights (European Affairs Committee Report)

Viscount Trenchard Excerpts

Monday 11th September 2023 Grand Committee

[Viscount Trenchard (Con)]

My Lords, I am most grateful to the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, for securing time for this debate today. I am also grateful to him for his excellent chairmanship of the European Affairs Committee and its predecessor committees. It has been a great pleasure to serve on them.

Of course, it would have been much better if your Lordships could have had an opportunity to discuss this report sooner than 25 months after its publication, but I am heartened to note that our much more recent report on the overall UK-EU relationship, published on 29 April this year, will be debated on 20 September, less than five months after publication. That is impressive progress. It is, however, perhaps fortuitous that the House only now has an opportunity to debate the Citizens’ Rights report, because two more years have elapsed and therefore there has been more time to assess the extent to which the arrangements established under the withdrawal agreement have worked well or not. In addition, the committee carried out some follow-up work in May this year.

My German daughter-in-law, who lives and works in London, was not at all unhappy about the settled status scheme and how it worked. I think the scheme has worked pretty well and has been reasonably well administered. The committee recommended that the Government should introduce a non-digital option for the scheme to assist those who have difficulties with digital technology. In any case, we are all familiar with the process of obtaining certified copies of physical documents, such as passports. So why can they not go to a post office—if they can still find one that does this—or to a solicitor’s or a notary public’s office, with a device to show the original digital document, and a printed copy of it, and obtain certification of that printed copy of the digital document? Would the Minister agree that such a certified copy should have the same status, and would effectively count as a physical form of the document?

Noble Lords have spoken about the High Court’s ruling that EU citizens should not have to apply separately to transfer from pre-settled to settled status. I believe the Government’s position on that subject should be acceptable and should not cause undue inconvenience. My right honourable friend the Home Secretary has accepted the High Court judgment of December 2022 and confirmed that any holder of pre-settled status who is eligible to change to settled status suffers no loss of rights if he or she fails to make a second application.

I am interested to note that the number of grants of settled and pre-settled status to EU citizens is now in excess of 6 million, although it is claimed by some that many EU citizens have returned home following Brexit. Does the Minister think that the statistics show that, contrary to expectations, there has been an increase in EU citizens resident in the UK since our withdrawal from the union? Can the Minister explain why the Government’s original upper estimate of likely applicants to the settled status scheme was only 4.1 million, whereas well in excess of 7 million have in the event applied?

There is much less consistency when one examines the question of the residence rights of UK nationals living in the EU. This matter is, of course, not wholly a union competence, and the EU’s member states operate a wide variety of systems. In particular, at our evidence session conducted on 16 May, British in Europe made us aware of high refusal rates for late applications by British citizens for permanent residence status in Sweden and Denmark. The Home Secretary assured us that she wishes to work collaboratively with the European Commission on this. We were also made aware of specific problems in Portugal involving payment for residence documents, and documents being issued for five years when they should be valid for 10 years. Can the Minister tell the committee what discussions the Government have held with the Portuguese Government on this matter, and how they propose to solve the problem?

Other noble Lords have raised further relevant points. I am particularly supportive of all the points made by the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, especially his comments concerning the reduction of support available for UK citizens seeking to establish or upgrade their residence rights in EU member states. I thank the noble Earl again for obtaining this debate today and look forward to the Minister’s reply.