Immigration and Social Security Co-ordination (EU Withdrawal) Bill (Fourth sitting)

Debate between Eleanor Smith and Caroline Nokes

Thursday 14th February 2019 Public Bill Committees

[Eleanor Smith (Wolverhampton South West) (Lab)]

Q My question is about the fact that the Home Office is saying it will grant settled status to someone for two years; I was going to ask whether you thought that was feasible, but I think you have answered that. Do you think the two years the Home Office is granting everybody is feasible? Do you think this can be done in that short space of time?

Professor Peers: It is quite hard to say. This is an app and an electronic process, but that is still a lot of people to go through the electronic process. I do not know about the technological feasibility of it. The difficulty will be with the people who do not get settled status, the people who do not apply and the people who get pre-settled status and argue that they should have had settled status. There will be those categories of people, and there will be some overlap with people who come in either during the transition period, if we have a withdrawal agreement, or during the unilateral, more truncated transition period if we have a no-deal scenario.

In that case, especially if there is no deal, I can imagine employers or landlords being confused about the situation: are these people necessarily entitled to be here or not? There will be people who could have had settled status but do not have it yet because they have not replied or they are waiting for a reply, as well as people who have a more limited leave to stay and more limited rights. Ultimately, there could be some confusion about telling those two groups apart, and we want to avoid a scenario where employers, landlords and banks start to become nervous about renting to or hiring people who are entitled to be here, especially because for a while we will have a category of people who are entitled to be here but do not have the documentation.

That is the background against which we could end up with a Windrush scenario, because at some point there would be greater demands for documentation and some of those people will not have got it or will not then be able to get it. If they have been self-employed, for instance, they may not have the records of all the work they did on an odd-job basis that would easily satisfy the system that they are entitled to be here.

[Caroline Nokes]

Q From the evidence we have heard from you in the course of the past 25 minutes or so, it is clear that the decision to end free movement following the outcome of the 2016 referendum has painted a complicated picture. Was that always an inevitable outcome, once we knew the result of the referendum?

Professor Peers: It was, obviously, the Government’s choice to interpret the referendum results as an end to free movement. There were other options, such as signing up to the same sort of relationship as Norway or Switzerland have with the European Union, or trying to negotiate another variation on that—although I do not know how willing the European Union would have been to negotiate a variation other than the Norwegian version of free movement minus a little bit. Given that free movement was so frequently mentioned during the referendum, the Government felt that was politically necessary.

It is inevitable that we will get into legal complications once we end free movement, because we have a big category of people who have been here on one basis and we are saying that they will all have to transfer to another basis. We are talking about 3 million people, and equivalent significant numbers of UK citizens in the EU. That is bound to be an issue.

Minors Entering the UK: 1948 to 1971

Debate between Eleanor Smith and Caroline Nokes

Monday 30th April 2018 Westminster Hall

[Caroline Nokes]

The hon. Lady is right—it is absolutely freezing. I have been shaking throughout the debate, although that may not be due just to the temperature.

That is an interesting question, and we are already working with the Ministry of Justice on a review of legal aid. I do not want people to have to use lawyers; I want them to be able to go through an easy process. I get the message from the hon. Member for West Ham (Lyn Brown) that we have to build trust, and I am determined to do so.

[Eleanor Smith (Wolverhampton South West) (Lab)]

rose—

[Caroline Nokes]

I will finish this point. I do not want people to have to incur more stress and cost—we will reimburse them for their legal costs already, as part of the compensation scheme, which I will address.

There is an important aspect here: we are determined to make this easy, by having the most senior and able caseworkers—who we are trying to empower, through a change of culture in the Home Office—to take decisions. We want not the “computer says no” attitude, which my hon. Friend the Member for North Dorset and many others have referred to, but a position where, better than the computer saying yes, the human says yes. That is a real change.

[Eleanor Smith]

I am one of the second generation of Windrush; my parents came in 1954. I really do not understand why people have to prove that they live in this country when they have children aged 30 or older and probably have grandkids, too. Why are we talking about having to prove it? Why can we not just give them a blanket exception? I do not understand why, if people have entered the country from 1948 onwards, and up to 1974, which is about 45 years ago, the Minister is talking about having to prove that they live in this country. Is that what she is saying?

[Caroline Nokes]

There is a significant question of deemed leave and processes in 1973 that did not give people a legal document that demonstrated their status. That is the failing that we have to put right. There may well be people out there who do not come forward. We have to work to give people confidence, but also to give them an important document that enables them to go on and get their British citizenship—all at no cost. I do not want anyone to fall foul of this going forward. If we just grant deemed leave again, we may find ourselves in this situation again.

Many Members have mentioned the difference from EU settled status. That is an important and difficult point. Since I came into this job, a great deal of my time and energy have been taken up with making sure that the settled status scheme, which we will open later this year, will work. It matters to me that it works digitally and easily, and that, rather than the “computer says no” mentality, we have a default position whereby if people are here, the computer will say yes.

The hon. Member for Hornsey and Wood Green (Catherine West) asked about whether the app will work on iPhone; we have been working on that for many months. It works on an Android phone, but Apple as yet has not released the update that would enable it to work on iPhones. I recognise that that is a problem. I encourage all right hon. and hon. Members to talk about that, because I cannot force Apple to participate—I wish I could, but I cannot. It is important that, for those EU citizens, many of whom have been here for years just like the Windrush generation, we make the process simple, straightforward and digital.