Immigration and Social Security Co-ordination (EU Withdrawal) Bill (Fourth sitting)

Caroline Nokes Excerpts

Thursday 14th February 2019 Public Bill Committees

[Nic Dakin]

Q You have illustrated very well the tightness of the industry. We had Alan Manning from the Migratory Advisory Committee here on Tuesday, who seemed to say that people just need to pay more.

James Porter: I think I have quite clearly illustrated how much more we have paid over the last 20 years—it has gone up significantly in the last five. It is all very well saying you have to pay more. We are paying more but we are not getting paid any more for what we produce, and we have no prospect of being paid more. The alternative is to say, “We will just export that production and we will pay someone £2 a day in Morocco or somewhere to grow it.” I do not think that is productive.

[The Minister for Immigration (Caroline Nokes)]

Q You have been very clear about the investment and innovation that have gone into the sector, with table-top growing, and so on. How far off do you think mechanised picking of soft fruit is?

James Porter: It could be a little like nuclear fusion—it might always be five years off, because it is so complicated. One of those robots takes about 10 seconds to pick one strawberry. They are really not quick. There are research and projects ongoing, but certainly, for the near to medium term I do not see it. You have to remember that you might get a strawberry picking machine, but you then have to develop a blueberry one, a raspberry one and a blackberry one. It is not in the near future.

[Caroline Nokes]

Q If it takes 10 seconds for a robot to pick one strawberry, how many strawberries can a skilled picker pick in 10 seconds? A lot.

We heard from the MAC on Tuesday that it felt that a distinction could be made for agriculture as opposed to other sectors. Do you want to expand, in the three minutes allowed, on why agriculture is special and why we should take steps to make sure it stays that way?

James Porter: I will just finish quickly the point about technology. It is ongoing and I am sure we will find ways to reduce the number of people we need quite quickly, with robots taking trays away or doing things like that. A lot of other important development is going on to analyse crops and look at crop predictions. But I put that to one side. Agriculture is different because, unlike any other industry, it is 100% reliant on EU labour or seasonal workers from abroad. It is the seasonal nature of that work that makes us particularly like that. Other industries are heavily reliant on that, but none as much as agriculture, particularly soft fruit and veg.

[The Chair]

If there are no other questions, I thank our witness very much for the time you have spent with us. If you leave and suddenly think of something else you wish you had got off your chest, we will be pleased to hear from you in writing.

James Porter: Thank you for taking the time to hear what we have to say.

Examination of Witness

Professor Steven Peers gave evidence.

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[Eleanor Smith (Wolverhampton South West) (Lab)]

Q My question is about the fact that the Home Office is saying it will grant settled status to someone for two years; I was going to ask whether you thought that was feasible, but I think you have answered that. Do you think the two years the Home Office is granting everybody is feasible? Do you think this can be done in that short space of time?

Professor Peers: It is quite hard to say. This is an app and an electronic process, but that is still a lot of people to go through the electronic process. I do not know about the technological feasibility of it. The difficulty will be with the people who do not get settled status, the people who do not apply and the people who get pre-settled status and argue that they should have had settled status. There will be those categories of people, and there will be some overlap with people who come in either during the transition period, if we have a withdrawal agreement, or during the unilateral, more truncated transition period if we have a no-deal scenario.

In that case, especially if there is no deal, I can imagine employers or landlords being confused about the situation: are these people necessarily entitled to be here or not? There will be people who could have had settled status but do not have it yet because they have not replied or they are waiting for a reply, as well as people who have a more limited leave to stay and more limited rights. Ultimately, there could be some confusion about telling those two groups apart, and we want to avoid a scenario where employers, landlords and banks start to become nervous about renting to or hiring people who are entitled to be here, especially because for a while we will have a category of people who are entitled to be here but do not have the documentation.

That is the background against which we could end up with a Windrush scenario, because at some point there would be greater demands for documentation and some of those people will not have got it or will not then be able to get it. If they have been self-employed, for instance, they may not have the records of all the work they did on an odd-job basis that would easily satisfy the system that they are entitled to be here.

[Caroline Nokes]

Q From the evidence we have heard from you in the course of the past 25 minutes or so, it is clear that the decision to end free movement following the outcome of the 2016 referendum has painted a complicated picture. Was that always an inevitable outcome, once we knew the result of the referendum?

Professor Peers: It was, obviously, the Government’s choice to interpret the referendum results as an end to free movement. There were other options, such as signing up to the same sort of relationship as Norway or Switzerland have with the European Union, or trying to negotiate another variation on that—although I do not know how willing the European Union would have been to negotiate a variation other than the Norwegian version of free movement minus a little bit. Given that free movement was so frequently mentioned during the referendum, the Government felt that was politically necessary.

It is inevitable that we will get into legal complications once we end free movement, because we have a big category of people who have been here on one basis and we are saying that they will all have to transfer to another basis. We are talking about 3 million people, and equivalent significant numbers of UK citizens in the EU. That is bound to be an issue.

[The Chair]

If there are no other questions, I thank you very much indeed for the time you have spent with us. If you should remember something that you wish you had raised, please write to us. Thank you.

Examination of Witness

Professor Stijn Smismans gave evidence.

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[Afzal Khan]

Q This 3 million is a big number. Even if small numbers get caught up in something like what has happened with Windrush, do you think there is a risk that EU citizens will be caught in that way?

Professor Smismans: Exactly. With the settled status scheme, even if there is a 95% success rate at the end, 5% of 3 million is a lot of people. Given the current consequences, that means being hit by the hostile environment—that you are illegal whatever you do. If you are in work, that will be illegal. You lose all access to services and you can be deported at whatever moment in time. Even if it is 5% of 3 million, that is a huge number, and it will be at least 5%, because people will not register, will be rejected, or people will be in the quite unstable position of pre-settled status. After five years, they might try again, and are likely to fail again. It is likely to be hundreds of thousands.

[Caroline Nokes]

Q I think that you have said that the best way to protect citizens’ rights is through the withdrawal agreement, and you will certainly get no argument from me on that front. In the event of a deal, given your clearly expressed view that citizens’ rights should be protected in primary legislation, is a withdrawal agreement Bill the best place to do that?

Professor Smismans: That is what I said, and ideally that would have been the case. The problem is that first, we do not know whether it is going to happen, and secondly, if it is going to happen, the time will be so short that we will not know what is in there.

[Caroline Nokes]

But ideally, that would be the place.

Professor Smismans: Yes. Ideally we would have discussed the withdrawal agreement and implementation Bill, and then we would discuss a Bill that removes all that except for this category. If we say, “We will remove everything, and then maybe we will see what comes after the rest”, that is more problematic.

[Caroline Nokes]

Q Do you think that the3million has a role to play in encouraging EU citizens to apply through the settled status scheme?

Professor Smismans: Definitely, and it is ready to do so. Nobody gets an advantage from people not being documented, given that there will be two categories of people.

[Caroline Nokes]

Q Good. I am very pleased to hear that the3million wants to continue to play a role, because we have certainly welcomed its input so far. Have you ever applied for an e-visa or an electronic travel authority to go to any other country?

Professor Smismans: No.

[Caroline Nokes]

Q Would it be your view that ETAs, or the electronic system for travel authorisation to go to the United States—you have clearly not applied for one of those—are better than physical documents, or do you think a wet stamp on a passport is the 21st-century way of dealing with things?

Professor Smismans: I have no experience with that system, so I cannot compare it.

[Caroline Nokes]

Q Would you acknowledge that physical documents can get lost and might need renewing, which could potentially come at a cost to either the individual or the state?

Professor Smismans: They can get lost, but we would hope that they are backed up on the electronic system, so a person has two ways of being secured.

[Caroline Nokes]

Although if we had an electronic system, that also might be backed up.

Professor Smismans: Yes, yet IT specialists say there is a big risk there.

[The Chair]

Thank you very much indeed for your time. We are very grateful for the evidence you have given the Committee.

Examination of Witness

Joe Owen gave evidence.

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[Stuart C. McDonald]

Q The withdrawal agreement does not stop us going further. What is your unhappiness with it?

Jeremy Morgan: It is more on the rights that we have in the EU. We have lost our freedom of movement rights, so the people who Kalba mentioned, who have moved to Europe—not necessarily to the Netherlands or to Luxembourg—have lost their right to move around. Many of them move there precisely because it is a very mobile market. People with IT skills, for example, work a two-year contract in one country and go to another. There are so many British people who have taken advantage of that, made lives for themselves, and ended up, in the course of that, picking up a family from one of the countries they have stayed in.

It has become a very complex system. Taking that right away from them is very serious indeed. The British do not have it in their gift, although at an early stage in the negotiations, I think in September 2017, the British offered to give EU citizens in the UK indefinite right to return. At present, you are allowed to be away for five years with your settled status, and then you lose it. The offer was to make that a lifetime right to return in exchange for freedom of movement for UK citizens in the EU. That was not accepted by the EU at the time, and has not been pushed as hard as it should have been since, because it is a terribly sensible arrangement.

[Caroline Nokes]

Q Thank you very much for your evidence, and for taking the time to come to see us and to set out your concerns so clearly. Do you think that this Bill is the right place to put citizens’ rights in primary legislation, or do you think that would better be done in the withdrawal Bill at the appropriate time?

Kalba Meadows: There is a timing issue, in that the UK may leave the EU in six weeks with no deal. That does not leave very long to legalise the rights of British citizens living abroad. If we know that the EU27 states are looking for legal guarantees for their own citizens living here, we do not have very long to do it. They will be looking for those in order to put into place their own legislation. I would have concerns about leaving it too long.

[Caroline Nokes]

Q From the conversations that you have had to date with officials, MEPs and so on, you believe it to be an absolute imperative that it is in primary legislation and not something that is left to the secondary rules that have to date established the 3 million EU citizens’ rights here.

Jeremy Morgan: It would make it an awful lot easier for them because they could say there is at least a law. The problem then, of course, is that the law can be changed, but it still would look an awful lot better. They know who Henry VIII was as well and they have seen the discussion. EU officials and politicians are pretty tuned in to what goes on in this country. They have seen the discussion and it worries them.

Kalba Meadows: May I add briefly that when I had this conversation with senior politicians and officials in France, they were not at all impressed? They did not accept that what is currently in place to cover settled status in the case of no deal was in fact offering sufficient guarantee.

[The Minister for Employment (Alok Sharma)]

Q Thank you for your submission. I know that you have also talked to my officials on some of the amending SIs. I have one question on pensioners’ uprating, which you brought up. What impact do you think it would have on UK nationals? Have you talked to people extensively about potentially losing their uprating?

Jeremy Morgan: It would be devastating.

Kalba Meadows: You took the words out of my mouth.