European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Bill

Christine Jardine Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee: 1st sitting: House of Commons & Committee: 1st sitting
Tuesday 7th January 2020 Commons Chamber

[Christine Jardine (Edinburgh West) (LD)]

I rise to support Labour’s new clause 5 and to press to a vote my own party’s new clause 34, which would create a right of appeal when settled status was refused.

Shortly before the general election, I visited a school in my constituency. During the usual chat with students about what they would do after their exams, what careers they would pursue and whether they would go to university, one girl told me that she was worried about her future. She wanted to go to university, but she was afraid that she would not be able to. She had lived in Edinburgh most of her life, but she and her parents were from a different part of the European Union and they did not feel secure about what would happen to them if Brexit went ahead. This is the only country that she really knows, and her parents did not know where they stood because of the uncertainty and the difficulties that they saw with the settled status proposals. She is not the only one.

Like so many in this place, I have colleagues, friends and many, many constituents who have made their lives here. These are not the people who, as this Government shamelessly claimed during the election campaign, cost us billions, put pressure on public services and strain on school places, and led to more crime. These claims were made despite the evidence from migration advisory services, which showed the opposite to be the case.

These are people who came to this country to work and pay taxes. Many were part of the hugely valuable workforce in our NHS, our university sector and major private companies. They deserve to have this country recognise that and respect their rights. This Government should do that by standing by the promise that was made to those people by the Prime Minister when he entered Downing Street. That is why I and the Liberal Democrats will be supporting the Labour party’s new clause 5 to give automatic rights to EU citizens, rather than them having to apply for settled status with the potential of facing deportation if they do not. That is no way for this or any other Government or any other country to treat people.

[Alex Chalk (Cheltenham) (Con)]

It is incredibly important that we take every opportunity to reassure EU nationals who, as the hon. Member rightly says, are so valued in our country. In those circumstances, did she take the opportunity to give that reassurance to her constituents and say that if they simply applied for settled status, it would be vanishingly unlikely for them to have any difficulty staying in the UK?

--- Later in debate ---

[Christine Jardine]

I thank the hon. Member for his point, but what I did was promise them that I would fight for their rights in this country. I would fight for them to have the automatic—[Interruption.] No, I was not scaremongering. I promised them that I would do what I am doing tonight. I said that I would stand in this House and call for them to have the automatic right to stay in this country—this country, where they have lived, where their parents have contributed and paid taxes—without having to apply and face the fear of deportation if they failed. That is what I promised.

Our economy—our demographic—demands that we encourage people to come here and contribute, bolster our workforce and fill the skills gap that we see in the NHS. That is why, as I promised that teenager and the many constituents who have come to me, I will fight to safeguard the rights of all EU citizens in the United Kingdom, and of those UK citizens who have made their lives across the EU, by asking for reciprocity. That is why we have tabled new clause 34 to create a right of appeal if an application for settled status is refused. These people deserve so much better than what is being offered by this Government.

On 13 December, following the general election, I thought about how that teenager and so many other people who have come to this country must have felt. What does the future now hold for her and her siblings and for so many others in my constituency and across the country? I am talking about people who, through no fault of their own, have had the security, which the hon. Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East (Stuart C. McDonald) mentioned, ripped from them.

Many of those people will vote with their feet. We will lose people in an exodus that shames us. We will lose people who make a valuable contribution to our education system and our health service—something that shames this country. People will leave their lives and their livelihoods because they do not feel welcome. The hon. Member for Cheltenham (Alex Chalk) accused me of scaremongering. The rhetoric of his party during the election, demonising people and driving us towards a scandal that will dwarf Windrush, was far from acceptable. It is not good enough. The Minister talked tonight about safeguarding rights, but if he really wants to do that and if he really wants to respect the people who have come here and contributed to our being the fifth largest economy in the world, make their right to stay here automatic—and do it now.