EU Settlement Scheme

Claire Hanna Excerpts

Wednesday 7th July 2021 Commons Chamber

[Claire Hanna (Belfast South) (SDLP)]

Like other Northern Irish MPs, I have spent a lot of time in the Chamber, in Select Committee meetings and in the media talking about the free movement of goods and about people’s emotions and identity in the context of Northern Ireland. However, there has been much less discussion of the plight and the rights of EU nationals who have been living, working and contributing in our community. The free movement of sausages has demanded a lot more political time and energy than the lives and horizons of our neighbours, friends and colleagues.

We know that, following the referendum, uncertainty was created in the lives and careers of many EU nationals, and that chill set in long before the settlement scheme was announced. Employers were not sure whether a person would be around long enough to justify the investment in a training course. Would a landlord be allowed to sign a one-year lease with a particular tenant? Would it not just be less hassle and less admin to hire a local worker, even if they were less qualified? There has been a cloud over the future of EU citizens, and their horizons have been limited. Of course, the horizons of young people in this country have been limited too, with curbs put on where their life and their work may take them in the future.

Overnight on 30 June, many people previously living legally here and in Northern Ireland found themselves more vulnerable to the hostile environment. I proudly represent the most diverse constituency in Northern Ireland, and my team and I have been helping constituents navigate the new system. We have experienced at first hand their difficulties, knowing the culture of “no” that pervades in the Home Office—a presumption of guilt and unsuitability, and a disregard for people and the emotional consequences of living a life in limbo.

The immigration frameworks that the UK is introducing devolve the hostile environment to the community. Despite assurances that EU nationals and their family members would not be required to provide evidence of their status in order to access services, unlawful checks and discrimination are a reality. We know of cases where GP practices, landlords, employers and social security providers have requested share codes and additional documentation. Public servants, in all their fields, have become immigration officials, and a chilling inevitably follows that. I hope that the Minister will take the opportunity to clarify the legal viability and the legal rights of those citizens, and to reiterate that they are legal and welcome and valued here.

I have been told by the Home Office that there is no service standard, so there is no indication of how long people might wait for a decision on their case, and, as others have outlined, many struggle to access the helpline. As well as taking steps to rectify that, will the Minister address the widespread calls for a physical record or manifestation, so that people do not have to share screen- grabs, with all the data protection issues that that raises?

The overall Brexit immigration policy delivers a further blow to our society and economy. Northern Ireland traditionally has had net neutral immigration. To the extent that we have had anything approaching an immigration problem, it has been an issue of young people leaving our shores and not coming back. In fact, over the last decades, EU workers have helped us to address those problems. They have brought hard work and have brought diversity and vitality, as generations of people from the island I live in have done to other countries over many years.

EU migrant workers have staffed core economic activities, such as agrifood, manufacturing, tourism and hospitality, and certainly health and social care. In 2016, 7% of employees were EEA nationals, making Northern Ireland, outside London, the region with the highest level of labour migration from EEA countries. According to the Department for the Economy in Northern Ireland, that number has fallen by 26% since the referendum. A quarter of those workers—our colleagues and our neighbours—upped sticks and left rather than deal with the hostility that was created by a campaign that framed them as the cause of all our problems.

Members will know that the pandemic has absolutely nailed the lie that wages are synonymous with the skill or value of a worker. An immigration framework should not use salary level as the primary determinant of a person’s ability to work in the UK, especially when the same Government do little to address chronic low pay. With lower wages than the UK average, the points-based threshold of £25,600 is particularly ill-suited to Northern Ireland. Fewer than a third of migrant workers are currently able to meet that threshold. I would love to believe that it will drive up wages for local workers or EEA workers, but I not believe that was in the hearts and minds of the system’s architects.

While the protocol’s measures against a hard land border for goods have mitigated some aspects of Brexit, the unfit-for-purpose immigration rule is an example of the creeping borderism that Brexit is bringing to the island of Ireland. A Spanish backpacker can no longer make their way along the Wild Atlantic way from Cork all the way up to Belfast by working in bars. An Estonian software engineer can no longer seamlessly transfer from the Dublin office to the Belfast office. Why would someone from the EU come to work in Derry when 10 minutes over the border in Donegal they can do so with no bureaucracy or paperwork? Why would a multinational company choose a location in Newry when there is less cost and less red tape a few miles down the road in Dundalk?

Northern Ireland’s only saving grace in the competition for foreign direct investment is that the protocol offers companies the unique and alternative proposition of access to both markets and it is ironic that—in addition to the hostility of these immigration frameworks—the Government seem determined to spaff that up against the wall. That is why the people of Northern Ireland have rejected this approach for the last five years.