European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Earl of Clancarty Excerpts

Committee: 11th sitting (Hansard - continued): House of Lords
Wednesday 28th March 2018 Lords Chamber

Noble Lords may also like to consider the interesting situation of citizens of some of the Crown dependencies in the Channel Islands, where there is a bespoke and unique relationship. I make the point that this is all a matter of political will. I seek to know from the Minister whether that political will exists in the Government’s ranks. I raise the question in the hope that, when it comes to negotiations, a way is found to ensure that benefits are afforded equally to people whose citizens’ rights now appear to be threatened. I beg to move.

[The Earl of Clancarty (CB)]

My Lords, I added my name to an amendment in this group. I spoke at length to a similar amendment, my own Amendment 210, earlier in the Bill, so I will be fairly brief.

I fully support everything the noble Lord, Lord Wigley, has said. It is important that we should understand that the loss of EU citizenship would affect British citizens resident in the UK as well as those living abroad. That is a huge number of individual citizens whom the noble and learned Lord, Lord Keen, avoided referring to in reply to my own amendment but who are aggrieved at that potential loss of individual citizenship. In that same reply, the noble and learned Lord said:

“Let us be clear that EU citizenship is linked directly to citizenship of a member state”. —[Official Report, 7/3/18; col. 1081]


I do not argue with that. The court case begun in Amsterdam is to determine the nature of such linkage and whether a citizenship, once held by a citizen, cannot be taken from them against their will whatever actions are taken at the national level.

It is young people who will feel the loss of EU citizenship most keenly, not just the principle of European citizenship; it is young people who feel most European. Also they will feel the real practical effects of that loss, particularly if we also leave the single market. As others have pointed out, young people have found a strong voice in the group Our Future, Our Choice—one of whose founder members, incidently, was a leaver who changed his mind. We have all learned a lot since the referendum; that is something that, as a country, we should freely admit.

In the EU citizenship debate in the House of Commons on 7 March, the Immigration Minister, Caroline Nokes, said:

“We are content to listen to proposals from the EU on associate citizenship for UK nationals”.—[Official Report, Commons, 7/3/18; col. 351]


So I ask the Minister: has there been any development on that front, bearing in mind that such a citizenship, according to Voelker Roeben, would not depend on revision of the founding treaties? I warmly support the amendment.

[Lord Adonis (Lab)]

My Lords, I completely understand the motivation of the noble Lord, Lord Wigley, and I am of course entirely with him in wanting to stay in the European Union, but I am at a complete loss to understand how it is possible for British citizens to continue having European citizenship after we have left the European Union. I simply do not understand how it is possible to have citizenship of an organisation of which we are not a member. The specific issue of what happens to European Union residents in Britain, given that the Government have already committed that their rights will be guaranteed for a further seven years, is a completely different point. Assuming that the noble and learned Lord will be replying to the debate, will he tell us what the precise relationship will be between the European Court of Justice, European law and the seven-year guarantee of the rights of EU citizens currently resident in the UK?

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[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)]

My Lords, in the words of those who tabled the amendments and their supporters, we hear the cry of millions who feel the loss of what they believe has been, or has become, their birthright—European Union citizenship.

We see this in many different ways. Half a million holders of UK passports have already applied for Irish passports, often by virtue of their parents’ or grandparents’ status; 30,000 EU citizens—double the number we saw before the referendum—who live here are now applying for British nationality; and many Britons are taking up membership of an EU member state so that they can preserve their EU citizenship. There is an even greater number of people who, like me, would love to continue to hold a purple passport. I have no nostalgia for my old passport—I think it is black rather than blue—and do not want it back; I would like to keep my purple one.

Apart from the emotional attachment, there are pragmatic reasons why people would like to continue with that. As the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, said, even with the withdrawal agreement we are not certain that it will allow Brits who are living abroad to do more than just remain in the country where they find themselves at the moment. It may not guarantee them the right to move or work elsewhere.

I heard recently from a British national, Nick Gammon, who at the moment is living in Holland—he has lived in France and Ireland—whose children absolutely identify as citizens of Europe. He is a translator and even at the moment his work is done not only in Holland but in Belgium, Germany and Britain, and indeed all over the place. But of course, after exit, while he will be able to carry on living in Holland, he will not be able to continue to live and work in one of those other places if it is not included in the final withdrawal agreement—although it would be nice if we could hear that it is going to be.

Of course, Nick is not alone. A few days ago we talked about the designers, architects, performers, sports men and women, nurses and all sorts of people who move around for their career, very often as freelancers, as well as for their personal lives. We heard from our EU committee earlier about how tourists moving abroad now risk losing their European health insurance card, the EHIC. Obviously this does not apply to many noble Lords in the Chamber, but if you happen to be more than 90 years of age or you have a pre-existing ailment, it will become very hard to get health insurance if we lose the EHIC. So there are enormous problems with continuing the movement across Europe that we know.

So there is undoubtedly an ache for the EU passport, with its ongoing residence and other rights. Perhaps I may briefly tell one more story. In my husband’s family, his cousin’s husband will I think be known to many: Nick Ross, whose Jewish grandmother and father arrived here from Germany in the 1930s. Nick has just taken German nationality. He has done so for a number of reasons, including how Germany has changed—although he does not necessarily want to go and work there. Following his lead, his sons, nieces and nephews have also applied for German passports, which says quite a lot. I gather that it is taking the youngsters rather longer because there is now a long queue of people doing just that.

That is a reflection of the world in which the current generation lives. Young people have more in common with friends, colleagues and partners across the continent than our parents would ever have imagined. It is the world that EU citizens residing here have also come to assume. Some are still in shock after the June 2016 decision, which will bar their automatic right to stay here, work and bring their family over. Even with all the promises we have been given, we know that there are great worries about how the system for settled status will continue.

I return to the amendment. Of course we cannot acquire stand-alone EU citizenship. It does not exist but is an add-on, even in the words which we have just heard quoted. It is an add-on for the nationals of EU member states. The EU 27 nations are no more going to give passports to all 65 million of us than we would give British passports to the 500 million citizens across the European Union—so I am afraid that we are not likely to get passports from another EU member state, and therefore, sadly, we will lose our EU citizenship.

But what we can do is ask the Government to ensure that at every stage of the negotiation they prioritise the movement of people around the continent in the way that a generation has learned to enjoy and value. Whether it is over the negotiations on staying and working with Euratom, Erasmus or the medical or other agencies, everything we do should help to preserve the free movement across the continent which youngsters in particular have come to expect. I think that we would like to see, if I may use the phrase, a continental Brexit, and I hope that Ministers will press for it so that people will be kept at the centre of all the negotiations, which will help them to continue to feel European—even if we revert to the old black passports.

[The Earl of Clancarty]

I detect an elegiac and rather defeatist note in what the noble Baroness is saying. Has she read the report by Professor Volker Roeben? If so, what is her response to it?