Brexit: European Union-derived Rights

Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town Excerpts

Tuesday 4th April 2017 Lords Chamber

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[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

That a Minister of the Crown do report to this House by the end of this Session on the progress made towards ensuring that qualifying non-United Kingdom European Economic Area nationals and their family members are able to retain their fundamental European Union-derived rights after the United Kingdom has left the European Union.

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)]

My Lords, in moving this Motion I shall not go through all the arguments which led to a majority of 102 when we discussed this issue before. It is clear that the House felt that neither EU citizens here nor UK citizens abroad should pay the penalty of our withdrawal. We said that we would continue to make the case.

As Sadiq Khan said of London, where a third of the EEA nationals—some 1 million—live, Europeans who live and work in London are Londoners and should be given “a cast-iron guarantee” of their right to stay post-Brexit. These Europeans work in every part of our community. As the unions such as Unison have said, clarity is needed as early as possible because any decrease in the number of EU citizens working here would have a huge impact on our public services, especially in health and social care. One in 15 nurses in England is European, although already the number registering is declining to only a quarter of those in the same period of 2015. We have also lost twice as many doctors as in 2015. The RCP and the BMA blame this on the lack of assurances for EU nationals.

In social care, Europeans comprise 6% of the English workforce—some 84,000—of whom 90% do not have UK citizenship. We should remember that of the 3 million EU citizens only 10% are married to British nationals, which gives them some hope of being able to stay. Other concerns arise for those whose spouses are non-EU. In academia, at the Francis Crick Institute—he of course won his Nobel Prize for the double helix with that immigrant Mr Watson—44% of its staff and 56% of its post-docs are from the EU.

I want to make three points today: on transparency of negotiations; on urgency; and on the EU 27’s priorities. On the first, we have already seen that there is going to be no secrecy. Predictably, we saw the Tusk letter on TV before the ink had dried so our Motion will not expose any secrets. It will simply allow what is in the public domain to be discussed in your Lordships’ House.

Secondly, on urgency people really cannot put their lives on hold for two years while awaiting the outcome of talks. They need to know now whether to take jobs and choose schools for their children, or make plans to leave. We are seeing European citizens turned away by mortgage lenders because of uncertainty over whether they can stay, while some employers are asking proof of permanent residency before workers get more than a fixed-term contract. Certainty is also needed for business. The British Chambers of Commerce has called on the Prime Minister to confirm that EU residents can remain after Brexit, with its director-general pointing out that some firms are already losing staff due to the avoidable uncertainty. The CBI president has said that its number one issue was to tell all 3 million EU workers that they can stay, or else their exodus will bring business to a halt. Likewise techUK, which is reliant on EU entrepreneurs, wants confirmation that EU citizens will be able to stay.

Thirdly, there is the stance of the EU 27. As Joseph Muscat, Malta’s Prime Minister and the EU’s chair, has said, the two sides need to remain friends. We can help if we meet their priorities wherever possible; the position of our respective nationals is one such area. Their chief negotiator Michel Barnier wants negotiations to begin by removing the uncertainty over the rights of citizens in each other’s countries. For the European Parliament’s Brexit lead, Guy Verhofstadt, it is an absolute priority and needs to be the first issue in the negotiations. He says that citizens should not become bargaining chips. In Malta, Donald Tusk prioritised people caught up in this process as the first duty, stressing the need to settle the status of EU citizens in the UK. The EU’s draft guidelines highlight reciprocal guarantees as a priority for the negotiations.

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[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

I thank the Minister, who we all think is young, handsome, brilliant and intelligent—so he will vote with us. There are really only two issues: certainty and a degree of urgency.

On the first—in the words of my noble friend Lord Morris, the people issue—there is some urgency. They need something now. If the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, is right and there is even a 30% risk of no deal, there are some really serious issues. If there is no deal, what happens to the idea of reciprocity that the Prime Minister wants? That is why we need continuous updates. We need to know what the Government’s thinking and preparations are, and their plans for that. This is not a secret. It should be open and it should engage us all.

On the second issue, I think—and brains much better than mine say—that we need legal certainty. But should the Government be right on that—that we do not, that everything is tickety-boo at the moment—this Joint Committee will find out because it will have taken advice and it will say, “We were wrong. The noble Lord, Lord Bridges, was right and we do not need it”. I would trust that Joint Committee to find out if that was the case and report back to us. The urgency of that case, as was said by others, is that we really do not want to muddle our discussion about how the vote takes place and what it means at the point we are actually discussing the agreement that we have, because people might then use the procedure to muddle the discussion about the core issue. We do not want that.

As the Minister knows, there is support all around the House. I hope that we will agree these two Motions but, even more, I hope the Government will respect the will of the House and will move to implement both of them if they find favour with your Lordships. I beg to move.

Motion agreed.