UK Nationals in the EU: Rights

Deidre Brock Excerpts

Tuesday 12th September 2017 Westminster Hall

[Dr Blackman-Woods]

My hon. Friend makes a really excellent point, and I hope that the Minister is paying attention to it. I think we have all had hundreds of letters and emails from constituents who are EU nationals asking that the Government guarantee the rights of EU citizens in the UK.

[Deidre Brock (Edinburgh North and Leith) (SNP)]

Anecdotally, I have been told of job adverts that contain the words, “Europeans need not apply”. There seems to be increasing evidence of discrimination and hostile working environments for EU citizens living in the UK. Will the hon. Lady condemn in the strongest terms the Government’s lack of action to tackle this, to make sure that the UK remains a place that people want to come to, and to send the message that all citizens are equal?

[Mr Gary Streeter (in the Chair)]

I call Roberta Blackman-Woods—30 seconds, please.

--- Later in debate ---

[Peter Grant]

I absolutely agree, and it is not only Scotland’s exceptional universities that are under threat; every research-based university and institution in the United Kingdom is in danger of losing out because of short-sighted folly.

One thing the debate has demonstrated is the absolute folly of those, particularly on the Tory Benches, who still try to tell us that we could just walk away today without a deal and it would make no difference. What a betrayal that would be of the 4.5 million people who, right now, are worried about whether their basic human rights will be respected: the right to continue to live in the house they already live in, and the right for their children to keep going to the school they already go to and keep playing with the same friends. Those rights are not ours to give and take away; they are rights that people have because they are human beings. For Ministers even to use phrases like “bargaining chips” to deny that they are treating people as such, makes it clear that somewhere, deep down inside, that is part of the thinking.

Every time we have discussed in the Chamber the rights of EU nationals living in the United Kingdom, the chorus of protest from the Conservative Benches has always been, “We are very concerned about the rights of UK citizens and UK nationals living in the European Union.” Today, those Members have been given a full 90-minute debate in which to express those concerns, and where have they all gone? They can turn up in their hundreds in the middle of the night to vote for the process to start removing the rights of those UK nationals, but when it comes to speaking out for them it is another matter. I can understand that some of them had other things to do, but when 320 of them cannot stay for the full 90-minute debate, that tells us more about where their beliefs and values really lie than anything we might say.

It is now six months since the Brexit Secretary told us that reaching an agreement on the rights of nationals in each other’s countries would be

“the first thing on our agenda”.

He went on to say:

“I would hope that we would get some agreement in principle very, very soon, as soon as the negotiation process starts.”

We are now a third of the way through that negotiation process, and the Library, in analysing the joint technical note of 31 August 2017, has indicated that there are five areas on which agreement is close and 20 on which it is nowhere near. In other words, in one third of the available negotiating time the progress on our No. 1 priority is that 80% of it is nowhere close to being agreed. That is what happens when human beings are used as bargaining chips instead of saying, right at the beginning, “This is what we’re going to do because it’s the right thing to do.”

We should never forget that the position of the UK Government in relation to the two sets of citizens is very different: we can ask other people to respect the rights of UK nationals living overseas, but we can absolutely guarantee the rights of non-UK nationals living here. Once again, I repeat the call for the UK Government to do that, not because it might make the Europeans do something we want them to do but because morally it is the only acceptable course of action.

The debate should have concluded on 24 June. The reason it has not is that the Government’s obsession with being seen to get hard on immigration has got to the point where any price, but any price, is worth paying. The economic price of losing our membership of the single market will likely be counted in hundreds of thousands of jobs and losses of tens—possibly hundreds—of billions of pounds to our economy.

[Deidre Brock]

My hon. Friend will be aware that the insurance giant, Chubb, is just one of the latest large companies to announce plans to move their headquarters from London—to Paris, in this instance—after Brexit. Would he consider it likely that those EU nationals who can still come to the UK—and still want to—might not have jobs to come to?

[Peter Grant]

It is not just that they might not have jobs to come to; the question is why on earth they would want to come when they look at the welcome they get from a leaked Government draft proposal that wants to start discriminating against people depending on the letters after their name, or when they have seen the unbridled joy on the faces of Government supporters when it was announced that every week since the referendum has seen a reduction of 1,000 in net migration from the European Union. In other words, the Government’s message to EU nationals is, “We are going to say that you’re welcome, but we’re actually happy that every week 1,000 people just like you have given up on the UK and gone to live somewhere else because they no longer feel they have a welcome future on these islands.” That should make us all feel utterly ashamed.

At its heart, the European Union was set up primarily as a trade union, an economic union. It is described as a political union, which it clearly is not. Fundamentally and most importantly, the European Union is now a social union, about the ever closer union of the peoples of Europe. Who could possibly want to see further division between those peoples? Union between the peoples of Europe should be what we all strive for. The hon. Member for Cardiff North (Anna McMorrin) hit the nail on the head perfectly in the first few minutes of her speech—and, indeed, in the rest of it. We have spent far too long talking about constitutions and politics, quotas and legislations, and not enough talking about human beings. Today, we are talking particularly about the plight of well over a million human beings who just happen to have birth certificates that say they were born in these islands. Their rights are important, as are those of the 3 million people who live here but were born elsewhere, and those of the 60 million people who will have to cope with the aftermath of this mess, long after some of us are no longer here.

I hope that there is still time for the Government to wake up to the folly of what they are doing. It is not too late for them to say, “We have messed up completely; the only way to get out of this mess is to agree to remain in the single market and to agree that the free movement of citizens between the nations of Europe should continue in perpetuity”.

European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill

Deidre Brock Excerpts

Committee: 2nd sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 7th February 2017 Commons Chamber

[Patrick Grady]

I think we have heard enough from the former Justice Secretary for now.

The point made by the hon. Member for Mid Bedfordshire (Nadine Dorries) is exactly what amendment 70 touches on. It calls on the Chancellor to publish an impact assessment on his Department’s responsibilities. The responsibility of the Treasury will change quite significantly. As we heard from the Brexiteers throughout the campaign, the Treasury currently channels all this money into the European Union. It is going to have to reabsorb that money and have the structures to apportion it back out to lots of different Government Departments.

[Deidre Brock (Edinburgh North and Leith) (SNP)]

My hon. Friend is doing a fantastic job of outlining a series of important areas that are likely to be greatly impacted on financially by the UK leaving the EU. Does he agree that the assessments we are calling for are the very least one should expect from any responsible Chancellor of the Exchequer?

[Patrick Grady]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. An impact assessment, by definition, is more than simply something printed on the side of a bus.

European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill

Deidre Brock Excerpts

Tuesday 31st January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Deidre Brock (Edinburgh North and Leith) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to follow a thoughtful contribution from the hon. Member for Stroud (Neil Carmichael).

A Government who were confident in what they were doing and confident that they were pursuing the right ends would have had no difficulty in engaging with Parliament. In fact, they would have welcomed the opportunity. What we saw instead was a Government and a Prime Minister hiding from Parliament and the democratic processes on which good governance is built. They were forced into coming to the House and doing the right thing only because they were dragged before the courts, defeated, and defeated again by campaigners holding up the principle of parliamentary democracy as something to which the Government should bow. I, too, would like to take this opportunity to thank those democracy campaigners—I single out Gina Miller in particular—for their contribution, which, as I have mentioned before, will have long-lasting effects on this and other issues.

This Bill—these few paragraphs, this poor excuse for legislation—has been wrung out of the Government, and its brevity is childish and disrespectful to this place, the courts and the people whose representatives come here on their behalf. The Government should be ashamed of themselves. The suggestion is that no preparation was done by the Government in advance of the Court judgment—not even when the judgment was going back to appeal without much hope of success. That would smack of the same kind of arrogant laziness that marked the approach of David Cameron’s Government to the referendum. There was no preparation; they just winged it and hoped. After hearing Members from the Government Benches, I am shocked that they do not think that the people should be entitled to know what the plan is. People like to mention the independence referendum very often: in Scotland, we debated the details for two years. In this place, the Government still do not what the details are two months before kick-off.

A clear indication of the lack of preparation is the attitude that the Government have struck towards the devolved Administrations, promising consultation and open dialogue, but delivering little—almost nothing. The Scottish Government, who have put some thought into how to proceed, offered some constructive suggestions but had nothing in return other than a promise that the paper that they presented would be read. There was no real engagement, no dialogue, no offer to discuss the negotiations as they go along, and no offer of a seat at the negotiating table for Scottish Ministers. That is what a United Kingdom Government would offer if they were serious about taking the devolved Administrations with them and if they were confident of their ground.

Scotland and Wales have particular reasons to be anxious about what the UK Government are doing in Europe, but Northern Ireland, despite the warm words of the right hon. Member for North Shropshire (Mr Paterson), has more reason than most to worry. The prospect of a return to a hard border is horrendous for communities and businesses in Northern Ireland and any threat to the common travel area extremely serious. The Government’s attitude to date seems to be an approach that says that everything will be fine, that Northern Ireland has always been treated as a special case by the EU and will be treated so again. That ignores the fact that it was treated as a special case while it was part of the EU. There are no guarantees that any EU institution or member state will feel like giving special dispensation to Northern Ireland. If there is a case to be made there, it may only be by the grace and good will of the Irish Government that it is made.

The UK is approaching Brexit in the same way that this Bill was made—with hope, arrogance, swagger, disdain and, frankly, nothing in its pockets. There is nothing on offer to our European partners because the arrogant assumption of this Government and of the Brexiteers around them is that the EU needs the UK more than the UK needs the EU, and that London is the epicentre of world trade, which means that the EU’s financial institutions will come begging rather than that firms will move staff to the EU.

[Ian Paisley (North Antrim) (DUP)]

I thank the hon. Member for giving way. She is absolutely right to raise the matter of the Irish border. If I were living in the Irish Republic, I would be greatly concerned that my single largest trading partner—the USA—is not in the EU and, pretty soon, my other single largest trading partner—the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland—will not be in the EU either. The Republic should be getting out along with us.

[Deidre Brock]

Maintaining a close trading relationship with Northern Ireland will of course be in the best interests of the UK, whether or not it is in Europe, and it is the same with Europe as well.

Let me return to my point about the Government believing that the EU’s financial institutions will come begging rather than that firms will move staff to the EU. That is how it appears and how it will continue to appear, because this legislation, perhaps the most important constitutional legislation considered by this House in 40 years, has come without a White Paper or an intelligible Government position. It has come without a manifesto commitment and without preparation. This Bill cannot be entrusted to carry the intent of this House, because this House does not know the intent of the Government in leading negotiations with the 27 other EU states. What does the trading agreement they seek look like? Does it give us full access to the market? What about the movement of people between EU countries and the UK? We hear a constant barrage of comments about taking back control of immigration, but nothing about how those controls will be exercised. We know neither the starting position nor the hoped-for end effects of the triggering of article 50. We saw a supposed 12-point plan recently, but frankly that looked more like a wish list. In the great field of evidence-based policy making, this Bill does not figure. The devolved Administrations on these islands have been operating without knowing what position the UK Government are taking, each trying to find some kind of satisfactory rescue for their people, but all hampered by the UK Government.

I should be astonished that the Government are seeking to take the UK out of the EU with this pitiful “dog ate my homework” excuse for a Bill and I should be shocked that most of the loyal Opposition are not opposing it, but I am not. We have come to expect nothing more from this clueless, rudderless Government and this apparently fratricidal official Opposition. The SNP will not support the triggering of article 50. We believe that Scotland’s place is in the EU and we are here to speak up for Scotland’s best interests. I hope that enough Members on the Government and Labour Benches have the character to join us in the Lobby, but I am not holding my breath.

Oral Answers to Questions

Deidre Brock Excerpts

Thursday 1st December 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Davis]

My hon. Friend is exactly right and that is why we have taken this strategy. I hope that, at the end of the day, there will be unanimity so we can get early movement.

[Deidre Brock (Edinburgh North and Leith) (SNP)]

Since 2014, Scottish small and medium-sized enterprises have received over €21 million in funding through Horizon 2020. What assurances can the Minister give that firms will be eligible for equivalent funding before and after 2020?

[Mr Robin Walker]

As the hon. Lady knows, the Treasury has already given strong assurances up to 2020, beyond the period of our exiting the EU. That is an important signal to SMEs, universities and others that they should continue bidding for the scheme. The current EU budget and the framework for Horizon 2020 runs only up to 2020.