EU Settlement Scheme Debate

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Department: Home Office

EU Settlement Scheme

Deidre Brock Excerpts
Tuesday 29th June 2021

(3 years ago)

Commons Chamber
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Kevin Foster Portrait Kevin Foster
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I could not agree more. I suspect that a few years back we were getting lots of predictions that we would never manage to grant millions of statuses to people who are our friends and neighbours, but we have managed to do that and we have had applications come in. I agree that now is the time to encourage people to get their applications in and secure their rights, and join the millions of people who have already done so.

Deidre Brock Portrait Deidre Brock (Edinburgh North and Leith) (SNP)
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It has been clear that the Government have no idea how many EU citizens were in the UK, or how important they are to the NHS, the economy and our cultural and educational institutions. It is also clear that the settlement scheme is overly bureaucratic and unwieldy, so I am going to press the Minister again: will the Government at least extend the deadline by six months so that the mess they created can be sorted out?

Kevin Foster Portrait Kevin Foster
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The many people who found it was a simple application using an app would be surprised to hear the comments about it being unwieldy and everything else. The fact we have managed to grant millions of statuses already and have hundreds of thousands of applications received, and be granting thousands more statuses and receiving thousands more applications every day, would not suggest that this is a particularly unwieldy system to deal with.