EU Settlement Scheme

Chris Law Excerpts

Wednesday 7th July 2021 Commons Chamber

[Chris Law (Dundee West) (SNP) [V]]

The Minister boasts that the EU settlement scheme has been “a huge success”, with more than 6 million applications received. Let me be clear from the outset: these are not 6 million applicants. They are 6 million individuals who are our family members, our neighbours, our friends and our colleagues and their loved ones. Shamefully, they have had to face needless anxiety and bureaucracy ever since the disastrous vote to leave the EU five years ago. Each one of these individuals has a story of how they came to live here, why this is now their home, and why they should not have been put through this unnecessary, traumatic process simply to maintain the rights that they have always had.

I was particularly taken aback by the story of one of my constituents, Irena Jendrycha. Irena is 77 years old and was born in a Nazi concentration camp in 1943. She was scheduled to be executed but was saved when the camp was liberated at the end of the war. Incinerators were being prepared for the extermination of all the camp’s inhabitants at 12 o’clock that day but Irena and her mother were thankfully saved just in time, 10 minutes away from death, a moment Irena describes as an act of God.

After the camp’s liberation, Irena and her mother were sent to a refugee camp in Italy where her mother met Irena’s stepfather, after he had been released from a Russian gulag at the end of the war. As a family, they were transported to the UK and, at the age of four, Irena settled in Scotland. She has spent her life here since then and, in fact, has never even left the UK after arriving all those decades ago.

I am telling this story because Irena is one of the many millions who has had to apply for the EU settlement scheme. She is one of the UK’s last holocaust survivors and told me that the application process made her relive every horror of her past. In her own words, she described it by saying that

“any goodness within me was sucked out of me like a syringe”.

This is morally reprehensible and should shame the Government, but it is the reality of this scheme and their hostile environment. It is the consequence of being dragged far right by the UK Independence party and the Brexit party and treating individuals who contribute so much as mere statistics or a migration target to reach. I am sure that Irena is not the only one who has been left feeling like an outcast with no sense of belonging as a result of having to go through the scheme’s process to remain in the place they call home. Simply put, this scheme clearly demonstrates that the Tories are living up to their reputation as the nasty party. Indeed, Irena made it clear that she was appalled by politicians who every year will pose for pictures, speak in debates and attend events remembering the holocaust, yet are willing to make people like her feel unwelcome due to this hostile regime.

Irena has one question for this Government:

“Why are you putting me through this? I have to re-live it, through every horror… I went through this at school and now I am going through it again.”

I have a question for the Minister: after hearing all this, how can he judge the scheme as what he calls a huge success? This is not a country that I want to live in. The Scottish Government have always said that EU nationals are welcome here. The contrast in the message from the SNP and that from Conservative Members is crystal clear.

Finally, Irena asked me to tell her story today, as she wants to be a voice for the many who suffer in silence. I am deeply humbled that I have been able to do that. I want to assure Irena and all our citizens who call Scotland their home that, despite the cruel, callous and shameful approach of this UK Government, Scotland is their home and they should feel thoroughly welcome. I and all my SNP colleagues will continue to defend their rights wherever they come from and whatever their story is.