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

Kate Green Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading: House of Commons & Money resolution & Money resolution: House of Commons & Programme motion & Programme motion: House of Commons & Ways and Means resolution & Ways and Means resolution: House of Commons
Monday 18th May 2020 Commons Chamber

[Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab) [V]]

I draw the House’s attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.

Rebuilding our economy will be vital to the post-covid recovery. Immigrants to this country have long had an important role in our economic success, and we will need their efforts and talents again. I recognise, of course, that we will be in a very different situation in the coming months from the tight labour market of recent years. None the less, we can expect that some sectors will continue to struggle to recruit from the domestic labour pool.

That includes key sectors in my constituency, such as social care, hospitality, and retail and food processing, for which the £25,600 threshold will likely lead to significant and ongoing labour shortfalls, yet those sectors are essential to our recovery and our return to normal life. Unsurprisingly, therefore, the Government’s proposed approach is causing concern to businesses in my constituency.

I particularly want to speak about the impact the Bill could have on children, starting with EEA national children who could be eligible for the EU settlement scheme. Home Office figures reveal that, at the end of March, 493,800 applications to the scheme for children had been received, 84% of which had been concluded. That is worryingly lower than the 90% of cases that have concluded overall and, very concerningly, includes only a small number of looked-after children who could be eligible, only 11% of whom, according to the Children’s Society, have secured status. I accept that those cases can be complex, but it seems that, despite guidance from the Government and the Children’s Society, local authorities do not give sufficient priority to progressing applications for looked-after children in their care.

The Greater Manchester Immigration Aid Unit points to long delays for those children, even before an application has been submitted. Obtaining documents and securing advice is harder; contact with family members who confer the right to status may have been lost; during the covid crisis applications cannot be submitted by post; and the Government have warned that the crisis will create delays in processing them. Ministers have indicated that late applications will be accepted for children in such circumstances, but we need a guarantee that no child will be left without the legal status to which they are entitled.

I am concerned that more children will be subject to the “no recourse to public funds” condition as a result of a new immigration system, including some children born in the UK. Of course I recognise the support that exists under section 17 of the Children Act 1989, but that is insufficient. On 7 May, an eight-year-old British boy, supported by his migrant mother, won a ruling in the High Court that the policy denying families like his access to the welfare safety net breached article 3 of the European convention on human rights. The covid crisis has brought the vulnerability of families with no recourse to public funds into stark relief, and we need urgently to hear how the Government intend to respond to that ruling.

Finally, and harmfully to children’s wellbeing, too often the immigration system separates children from their parents. We know about the issue of family reunion and the way in which the income threshold keeps children apart from parents. Meanwhile refugee children cannot sponsor family members to join them in this country, and we are still waiting for certainty for separated children currently covered by the Dublin III arrangements, which enable children with family members in the UK to have their asylum claims transferred here to be considered. The Dublin arrangements will expire at the end of the year, and the Government have been indicating for some time that they want to replicate them post transition. We are none the wiser as to how they will do that, so I hope that tonight the Minister can update us.

I should like to make a point about clause 5. I simply do not see the justification for the sweeping powers that it gives to Ministers. If it is to rectify deficiencies and retain EU law, the Government already have the ability to do that under the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018. If it is to make new policy for the post-transition period, that will affect individuals’ expectations and rights, and have a potentially significant impact on labour mobility that should be debated and provided for in primary legislation. I therefore hope that Ministers will be prepared to reconsider clause 5 as the Bill continues its parliamentary passage.

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

Kate Green Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee Debate: 1st sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 9th June 2020 Public Bill Committees

[The Chair]

We will now hear oral evidence from a representative of the Federation of Small Businesses, who is attending by audio link, and from a representative of the London Chamber of Commerce and Industry, who is with us in the room. I welcome our witnesses and thank them for appearing today. Before calling the first Member to ask the first question, I remind all Members that questions should be limited to matters within the scope of the Bill, and that we must stick to the timings in the programme motion that the Committee agreed earlier. We have until 10.20 am. Before we get to the questions, perhaps the witnesses could introduce themselves.

[Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

On a point of order, Mr Stringer. May I first draw the Committee’s attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests in relation to financial support that I receive in my office for work on immigration policy?

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[Mr Richard Holden (North West Durham) (Con)]

Q I have a question regarding the change for non-EU migrants where it looks like the thresholds for wages are going to be coming down. The question is particularly for the London Chamber of Commerce and Industry. What impact do you think that that might have on the ability to get migrants with the right skills into the labour market in London and across the rest of the UK?

Richard Burge: It is helpful, because it is creating bigger diversity in terms of availability and access to labour. I think most small businesses, though, or any business will be keen to employ UK-based labour if they can. That is simpler and easier. In the end you do need to have access to global markets. We have to remember that we are a globally trading nation and, in the 21st century, trading tends to be in the skills of individuals and their brainpower and abilities. It is mostly about people rather than things, although we tend to focus on trade as being about things rather than people. The more we can do to keep our borders—within the Government’s requirements in terms of immigration for other purposes, social purposes—as open to people for work as they are for goods and services, the better.

[Kate Green]

Q How important are social protections, such as access to healthcare or pensions, to the recruitment and retention of employees from the EEA and around the world? Perhaps we can start with Mr Burge.

Richard Burge: They are hugely important, particularly when you are talking about people whose skills are valued less in the marketplace of wages than those of others, so any complexity to that will be a disincentive to employment. I would ask that whatever we do in terms of social security payments and pension provision, we try to make that as simple as possible. They are potentially a huge attractant.

[Kate Green]

Q I have a follow-up or separate question for you, Mr Burge, about higher-skilled workers and particularly graduates. What can the Government do, or what have the Government been doing, that might continue to make the UK an attractive destination for overseas graduates and EEA graduates in particular?

Richard Burge: The first community I would like to talk about is overseas graduates who graduate from British universities. What the current Government have done to release the block on people who graduate from British universities and come from overseas being able to work is a hugely positive step, enabling people who have been to university here to stay on and work for a year. That is hugely encouraging and hugely exciting, and I think most businesses will be enthusiastic about trying to pick up that market.

In terms of people coming from overseas universities and institutions, I think it is very important that we move ahead on equivalence of qualifications—the transferability of people’s qualifications—particularly in vocational skills. I think we have to streamline that. Obviously, we have to make sure, particularly when they are in life-governing professions like medicine, that those qualifications are rigorously examined, but the more we can move towards a universality of qualifications between like-minded countries, the better. That will help hugely as well, and I think we in the UK should be leading on it. We have the best universities in the world and therefore it is in our interests to make sure we have inter-transferability of those higher-level qualifications.

[Kate Green]

Q Thank you. Mr McTague, have you any comments on the approach to attracting higher-skilled overseas job applicants?

Martin McTague: I think the key is trying to make sure that graduates or undergraduates are attracted to UK universities, because once they are in that pool of the immediately graduating, they become a much more attractive group for small businesses in particular. It seems that a lot of the barriers that have been put up and are going to restrict the entry of undergraduates are the biggest worry for a lot of small businesses, because they think that therefore they will not have that pool of very skilled labour to draw on.

[Kate Green]

Thank you.

[Mr Goodwill]

Q My question is for Richard Burge in particular and concerns international companies in London that might well have existing employees based in Japan, Singapore or the United States who wish to come to London to work as part of their company’s operation. There are also companies that might be based in the European Union whose employees have habitually come to work in London but, under the new regime, will be in the same category as those first workers. My question to Mr Burge is, under the new regime, how will that system function? Will it be an equivalent situation, something that companies can work with easily, or will there be problems for international workers coming to the UK within a company that might even be based in London, but certainly an international one?

Richard Burge: The answer is that I don’t really know. A lot of companies that are already established in places such as Japan will find it easier; for the ones that have operations elsewhere in Europe, this will be a new world. This also comes down to the Home Office being flexible and agile in terms of making sure that we assume positive intent on the part of companies—that they are not getting people into Britain secretly to do full-time work, but that they are in fact part of the transferable market within their company.

We need to address that. It will be complicated, but there are precedents in companies outside the EU, so I think we will use that as an example. It will be more difficult for smaller companies. Increasingly, we find that international companies in London are actually quite small; they are not huge operations. You can find yourself to be an international company in London by dint of the first order put on your website, whereas in the old days you would have spent 20 years developing a domestic market and then you would move internationally. Smaller companies might find themselves potentially hostage to this without realising it. So yes, complex.

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[Stuart C. McDonald]

Q To turn the question around a little and look at it from the perspective of prospective employees as opposed to employers, if somebody has a job offer in London or Dublin, is there a danger that imposing the tier 2 system is going to make London much less attractive than Dublin, if they are faced by, for example, visa fees and visa applications and immigration health surcharges?

Matthew Fell: That is an issue. It is an issue that companies will look at, for example, if they were a multinational business and they were choosing the location of business, so it is true from a business perspective. From the employee perspective, it might be down to the speed with which they can get certainty—“Can I go and live there and know that it is okay?” Clearly, there are others who would speak more for the employee perspective, but that would be my perspective on the employee view.

[Kate Green]

Q How important is access to social protections such as health cover or protection of pension rights to the recruitment and retention of EEA nationals?

Matthew Fell: I think it is an important factor. It is quite hard to say exactly where the detail of that lands, particularly in the context of the EU-UK negotiations that are ongoing; we will need to see where they land. Social security measures and the issues that you have just described are really important for reciprocity—not just migrants coming to work in the UK, but UK workers overseas—and that reciprocity is particularly important for mobility of labour as well as for migrants coming to work in the UK.

[Kate Green]

Q In terms of highly skilled workers, including graduates, what is in place to support employers to access the skills that they need?

Matthew Fell: I think that bringing the skill threshold in the Bill down from degree to A-level is a positive change. That is a highly positive move that the CBI supported and which clearly broadens out the range of roles that can be addressed through that route. The issues are less about whether they can clear a threshold in terms of the work; they are more about the system costs and streamlining the red tape that I was describing. That is what would be most helpful.

Of course, even with that skills threshold reduced down to level 3 or A-level equivalent, that still leaves out many important roles for which businesses will find the transition and the adjustments quite hard to address in the short term.

[The Chair]

We have just over a minute for a very quick question and answer.

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[The Chair]

I call Kate Green.

[Kate Green]

Q I just wanted to ask for clarification. I may have misheard or misunderstood you in relation to one of your earlier answers, when I think you said that there were alternative labour pools—for example, family members or refugees who have secured status. To what degree is that potential pool of labour already fully employed in the UK, and what do you think the shape of that pool of potential labour is likely to look like in the future? I guess I am interested in the degree to which we really could look forward to seeing that as replacing lost labour supply should fewer EEA nationals come to the UK.

Brian Bell: It is both a good question and a very difficult question to answer. If you look at social care as a good example of this, something like 15% of workers in social care are non-EEA born. They can’t have been employed by the social care sector through the work route, as the work route is not open to the social care sector until next year because it has been RQF6 and that has excluded almost all such workers. Fifteen per cent. of the workforce has come through some other route. That is quite a big pool. Whether it is fully used—to be honest, we have not looked at that. We can do, because we have data on that, in the sense that we can see, to a certain extent, what all the non-EEA people in Britain are doing. Using the labour force survey, we can ask the question, “If you were born outside the United Kingdom and you are non-EEA, what is your current status? Are you in employment, are you looking for work or are you inactive but potentially available for work?” That is an interesting question. The one thing we cannot do—it just so happens we do not collect the data—is look at the visa you came in on. It would be nice to see whether asylum seekers are different than family route. I encourage the Office for National Statistics to ask that question.

That is an interesting question to look at, and we would be happy to do that—to think about whether there is a ready supply, potentially, of workers who are not actively looking at the moment but who, historically, have moved. There are an awful lot of people who would say they are inactive in the labour force survey but who, a few months later, have a job. We could look at that.

[Kate Green]

Q In relation to part-time work, there is no pro-rating of part-time salaries in the Government’s £25,600 threshold. Were you asked to look at the implications of that, including the gender equality and other implications? If so, what are your conclusions?

Brian Bell: We were. That was another difficult decision we had to make. The difficulty is the following: for the worker route, the system works where you are sponsored by a principal employer—a main sponsor for your job. The question, again, is, where you would draw the line if you said part-time work was acceptable? We were given representations by some firms that said, “Lots of our workers almost have a portfolio of jobs, and they might do a day here, a day there and a day here.” That fits very badly into the system, because you need one employer. Frankly, I don’t think Home Office enforcement would be enough to really follow through every single worker and say, “When you add up all your jobs together, are you earning a sufficient amount that you are not burdening the Exchequer?”, which is one of the criteria we are focused on.

The issue became, if we did something like, “If you are willing to work at least 16 hours,” would that be okay? In the end, we concluded that the fiscal costs were significantly higher for that type of worker than for a worker who would come on a full-time salary. In the end, if you are going to be selective, we did not think that was an area you would be selective of.

I should say that we were mindful of the fact that that disproportionately affects women rather than men. Part-time work is, of course, much higher among women than men. In the end, we did not find that strong enough because, although that is true, the gender patterns of migrants as a whole are not that dissimilar between the sexes.

One thing that we discussed, and left open for Ministers to think about, is that, at the moment, tier 2 is quite restrictive, in that, if someone takes maternity leave, they are sort of supposed to go back to the full-time job as soon as they finish that maternity leave. We said that consideration could be given to whether, once someone is on a visa, there could be some flexibility for people who have a child to go back part time, and for that to still count. I think that might be worth considering.

[Dame Diana Johnson]

Q I want to ask about an issue that Make UK raised in their evidence. They talked about the lack of people with the relevant green-skills qualifications that we need. We know from today’s news that we are relying on renewable energy at the moment, and moving away from coal. The evidence they gave was that a lot of the people with those skills are based in Denmark and Germany. Listening to what you said, there is obviously a longer term issue about skilling up our own population. Could you explain how the provisions the Government are introducing will assist us now in dealing with the shortages that we have in that important sector, around offshore wind and renewables generally?

Brian Bell: I should say that, if they have green skills at RQF3 and above, they are eligible for the scheme, so they will be able to enter the UK on a visa, so long as the employer is sponsored and they are paid the minimum salary threshold. I am not sure why green skills should be any different from normal skills. If there is a qualification or experience required for that job, and the person meets those criteria, the scheme is open for them. The scheme is not open for people who are at RQF1 and 2, which are essentially the jobs that either require fairly low formal qualifications or for which the training requirement to get that job is not very long. If that is the case, my response would be that we can recruit from the UK domestic workforce to fill those jobs.

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

Kate Green Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee Debate: 2nd sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 9th June 2020 Public Bill Committees

[Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

Q Also, Mr Morgan, if you can hear me, what do you think would be the consequences or the likelihood of British people moving to the European Union if the social security provisions that are currently in place, which allow for aggregation and recognition of contributions, were to change in the future?

Jeremy Morgan: I think it would reduce such migration considerably, because the aggregation of contribution rules are absolutely vital. Most countries, including the UK, have minimum periods of contribution: unless you have contributed for the minimum period or contributed the minimum amount, you do not get any pension at all, so you are making your contribution, possibly without any benefit. The great advantage of the social security co-ordination rules is that they enable you to aggregate periods spent in different countries in the EU, including the UK, and you therefore overcome any such barrier, provided you have worked, in all, long enough to meet the requirements. In Britain, I think, the minimum contribution period is 10 years; in Italy, where I live, it is 20 years. These are substantial barriers.

[Kate Green]

Q Would there be any concern for the UK, if it were to be less likely that people would choose to move to other European countries in the future?

Jeremy Morgan: Concerns in the UK?

[Kate Green]

Yes.

Jeremy Morgan: All I can say, speaking as one of the many people in Europe who have taken advantage of the ability to move, is that we feel it would be a significantly reduced opportunity for young people in the UK now. Seventy-nine per cent of UK citizens living in Europe at present are of working age or younger. It is not a case, as some stereotypes have it, that we are all pensioners. I happen to be one, but I am one of the minority. Seventy-nine per cent are of working age or younger, who have taken advantage of the opportunities that the movement that we have been able to have has given to us personally but also, in terms of cultural exchange and awareness of practice in different countries, to Britain as a whole. They have established a considerable presence in Europe and it would be a pity for that not to be continued.

[Kate Green]

Q This may not be an issue in which you are involved, but in relation to British owners of properties—second homes, for example—in Europe, the Government are obviously willing to welcome people here on six-month visitor visas but the same, as I understand it, is not necessarily true of other European countries, which would apply the 90 out of 180 days rule in the Schengen arrangements. Would that be a concern for British owners of property in Europe, in your experience?

Jeremy Morgan: Yes, it would, quite clearly. There are also questions as to whether they will be able to own property at all. Again, speaking of Italy, unless some bilateral arrangement is made, it will not be possible for British nationals to buy properties after the end of the transition unless they are resident in Italy. I am sure there are similar provisions in other countries.

[Kate Green]

Q Professor Ryan, in relation to British-born children of Irish nationals, are there any particular concerns that we ought to be aware of in relation to this legislation?

Professor Bernard Ryan: Thank you very much for bringing that up. One of the issues at present is that not only is there a lack of clarity about immigration status, but also it feeds into the lack of clarity as regards acquisition of nationality in two scenarios. One is British-born children—children born to Irish parents, and also Irish citizens wishing to naturalise. Because it is very often not clear on what basis Irish citizens are here, to the extent that it is not clear the question arises, “Are they without time limits and have they ever been in breach of immigration laws?” It is necessary also, from the perspective of the smooth working of British citizenship law, to absolutely tie down and clarify that Irish citizens are here, and on what basis. And yes, it will remove any possible question as regards children of Irish parents being British citizens and as regards access to naturalisation by Irish citizens who want it.

[Mr Robert Goodwill (Scarborough and Whitby) (Con)]

Q The Dublin regulations deal with a situation where, for example, an economic migrant or an asylum seeker who present themselves in the UK can be repatriated to the country where they first claimed asylum, and indeed deal with family reunion. Professor Ryan, will this Bill have any implications for the operation of the Dublin arrangements? Could the Bill be improved to enshrine some of its obligations on that statute book, or is that completely unnecessary?

Professor Bernard Ryan: I think you are bringing us into the question of the common travel area as such and its operation. That would be my interpretation of your question. One of the things I would expect to see in the future would be, if the United Kingdom does not stay within the Dublin system with the EU, that there will be an arrangement with the Irish Republic as regards asylum seekers, because of the open border. It would be logical to do that. I personally would prefer it if the common travel area, conceived as immigration control and co-operation between the two states, were on a more transparent, and maybe more statutory, footing—but that is a much bigger question. That is to some extent a different one from the status of Irish citizens, which is what the clause deals with. So, yes, in the end I would like to see the common travel area framed more transparently than it is at present.

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[Gary Sambrook (Birmingham, Northfield) (Con)]

Q Mr Berry, I sense your displeasure with clause 4, but earlier, in answer to Mr McDonald’s question, the FSB said that it was actually very happy with it, because it allows a degree of flexibility and allows the Government to respond to workforce demands and so on. Do you not think that business has a point, that flexibility should be built into the system?

Adrian Berry: The flexibility that you need to make individual rules about economic migration you get from the immigration rules, which are of course not the subject of this Bill. If you want to change part 6A, which contains the current points-based system for economic migration, the Secretary of State can lay new or amended immigration rules, with the assistance of the Immigration Minister.

Clause 4 here is designed to deal with primary legislation and retained EU law, not with the immigration rules, so if the FSB thinks the clause is changing the economic immigration rules system, it is wrong in that respect. It is changing primary legislation about the administration of immigration control, not the specific rules for economic migration, which are made under the immigration rules.

[Kate Green]

Q May I return, Mr Berry, to what you were saying earlier about the draft free trade agreement that the UK published in February and the associated social security co-ordination arrangements? What exactly is it that the UK is proposing to cover in those arrangements, which presumably would potentially be introduced using the provisions of clause 5 in this Bill? What is not being covered?

Adrian Berry: The draft social security treaty is attached to the draft free trade agreement, which is available on the Government website now, from last month. It includes short-term healthcare coverage for people who are travelling for short-term purposes, such as tourism and temporary work contracts, to receive what we call the EHIC card scheme. It also includes a system for old age pensions to be paid overseas in other EU member states and uprated to be equivalent to home pension rates here.

What is missing, and what we are losing, is disability pensions being paid overseas, and healthcare, which was attached to old age pensions and to disability pensions under the EU co-ordination regime, will no longer be attached for pensioners who retire in Spain, Cyprus or wherever, from 2021 onwards. At the moment, it is a bonus ball. If you get a pension paid overseas, healthcare coverage is included under the EU co-ordination regime and the bill is paid by the UK Treasury. In the new proposed UK treaty, that is going; it is just your old age pension uprating.

The UK has split the interrelationship between healthcare and social security and pensions, which is contained in the EU co-ordination regime, into two silos: social security and pensions in one silo, in this Bill, and healthcare arrangements under the Healthcare (European Economic Area and Switzerland Arrangements) Act 2019. There is no draft healthcare treaty attached to the UK’s draft free trade agreement at the moment, and no healthcare provisions included in this draft social security treaty. Both of those are missing.

Additionally missing is the S2 scheme, which we have at the moment, for people to make arrangements, prior to travel, to receive hard-to-find treatment in EU member states, if they cannot get NHS treatment in the UK. There is no S2 scheme for British citizens to go and receive that form of healthcare—healthcare that is unavailable here—and to get it in EU states. The cross-border health directive, which allows people to have their prescriptions and pick them up in EU states, will effectively be repealed. There is no provision for that in the draft social security treaty.

Who loses out? The disabled. They will not be able to get private health insurance to travel on holiday. It will have a direct and differential impact on people with physical and mental impairments. It will also have an impact on anybody who thinks they are going to be retiring to Spain, Italy or France. They will not have healthcare insurance there, even if they get their pension uprated. It is a big loss.

[Kate Green]

Q In relation to disabled people in particular, is it your view that it would be directly discriminatory to people to treat them in that way?

Adrian Berry: It is, but it would be in an international treaty arrangement. The problem is that it is certainly differential treatment. It impacts on them directly because something that they would have had, which has been protected under EU law and under the withdrawal agreement, will not be available to them. New movers—disabled people who move for the first time in 2021, at the end of the transition period—will not have that. Travel for them will become very problematic.

It is interesting that even for the new EHIC card scheme in the draft treaty, the really expensive stuff is now carved out. In the new EHIC card arrangement, which is in the draft treaty, if you want chemotherapy, dialysis or oxygen therapy, you have to get prior authorisation from the UK Government now, even if you are going on holiday. You do not have to do that at present. It is clearly a rationing device that will further impact on British citizens with long-term health needs who, frankly, deserve a holiday. They will find it very difficult to have that because they will not be able to have the necessary insurance and comfort that they need, in order to travel in safety.

[Kate Green]

Q May I ask you about schedule 1, paragraph 6, which appears to be quite a wide provision that allows Ministers to make changes to what can be covered by free movement arrangements? It appears to be widely drawn and, as I read it, could allow for changes, for example in relation to the treatment of asylum seekers or people who have been trafficked to the UK. Is that your reading of it? In any discussion that you have had, do you think that would have been the Government’s intention in the Bill?

Adrian Berry: It is interesting. In part 1 of schedule 1 they repeal some retained EU law, which is to be expected in the provisions on the workers regulation. That is a political choice. What is more unclear is that other retained bits of EU law, which relate to victims of trafficking or victims’ rights where people are victims of crime, remain on our statute book, but may be disapplied by this provision, if they are judged to be inconsistent with the provisions that are to be made in respect of immigration. We do not know whether they are or they are not. We do not even know the exhaustive list of these parts of retained EU law that help vulnerable people, such as victims of trafficking, because they are not spelled out on the face of the Bill.

At the very least, there needs to be a schedule spelling out the parts of retained EU law that may be affected by paragraph 6. Better than that, if you are going to repeal these parts of retained EU law, because you think they are inconsistent with the Immigration Acts, say so and put it in primary legislation, if that is your choice. Make a better law.

[The Chair]

Thank you for coming this afternoon. We are very grateful.

Examination of Witness

Luke Piper gave evidence.

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

Kate Green Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee Debate: 4th sitting: House of Commons
Thursday 11th June 2020 Public Bill Committees

[Stuart C. McDonald]

I echo entirely the comments of both Members who have spoken so far, the hon. Members for Halifax and for Coventry North West. In short, people who apply for refugee status in this country should not as a result be trapped in poverty for months on end, if not years, simply because they made that claim, but that is the situation that far too many asylum seekers find themselves in.

All the arguments in favour of lifting the ban have been set out very well. We all know that an absence from the job market for several months, if not years, can be hugely detrimental to people’s long-term prospects, regardless of all the other challenges that asylum seekers face in terms of integration. This change would provide a route out of poverty, saving money for the Government, given the savings that they would make on asylum support. It is a popular proposal among the public as well and would bring this country into line with many other countries in Europe and beyond.

This proposal should also be popular with MPs right across this House, and I think there are MPs in every single party who support it. While I do not expect the Government to make any major announcements today, I would be interested to hear the Minister say at least something about his thinking on this issue and whether he and his colleagues are giving serious consideration to doing something to stop people being left for months on end without any prospect of work or being able to get themselves out of poverty.

[Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

I, too, endorse the speeches we have heard in relation to this amendment. I only want to make two points to the Minister. First, the long delays in processing asylum applications and then appeals is, I think we can agree, a real concern for everybody in this House. The problem with having a ban on asylum seekers working is that there is very little incentive for the Home Office to make rapid progress in dealing with those cases. Indeed, given that 45% of appeals now succeed, it seems that we are taking a very long time to fail to give the chance to work to people who will ultimately obtain it.

Secondly, I want to ask the Minister a question that follows on from the one asked a few moments ago about his personal attitude towards lifting the ban on asylum seekers’ right to work. In the last Parliament, the previous Home Secretary, the right hon. Member for Bromsgrove (Sajid Javid), undertook to carry out a review of the policy and to give consideration to whether it needed to be revised. I do not think we ever heard the outcome of that review. It would be helpful to know whether the Home Office continues to conduct that review, when we might hear the outcome of it and whether evidence to support such a review is being sought from civil society and from parliamentary colleagues who might wish to submit ideas. It has been a long time since that commitment was made to the Home Affairs Committee, and it would be good to hear the status of that review.

[Kevin Foster]

I could make this a very quick response by saying that EEA citizens’ asylum claims are inadmissible, but given the constructive nature of Opposition Members’ speeches, I will respond more fully than the strict wording of the amendment allows me to. To my knowledge, there is literally no one with an outstanding asylum claim from an EEA country because they are inadmissible and therefore would not have to wait six months for a determination.

To be clear, our rules on the inadmissibility of asylum claims from EU citizens derive from the so-called Spanish protocol—part of the treaty of Amsterdam, dealing with this specific issue—which allows EU member states to treat an asylum claim by a citizen of another EU country as automatically inadmissible, unless exceptional circumstances apply. Those will, by their nature, be very rare. Claims from EEA citizens who are not part of the EU are considered by the UK, but on the basis that they are likely to be clearly unfounded. All EEA citizens, including those not in the EU, are considered to be from safe, democratic countries and are highly unlikely to suffer a well-founded fear of persecution or serious harm there. For those reasons, and because we do not foresee a change in these circumstances given the nature of the countries concerned, we intend to continue our policy on inadmissibility for EU citizens and rules regarding EEA citizens post the transition period. As a consequence, amendment 13 would be inconsistent with our broader policy on asylum claims from EU and EEA citizens.

Turning to Members’ wider remarks, our current policy allows asylum seekers to seek permission to work in the UK if their claim has been outstanding for 12 months through no fault of their own. Those permitted to work are restricted to jobs on the shortage occupation list—to use one example cited by the hon. Member for Coventry North West, a doctor—which is based on expert advice from the independent Migration Advisory Committee. We have recently commissioned the MAC to advise us on the shortage occupation list under the new points-based system. As Members will know, the required skill level is going from RQF6, graduate, to RQF3, A-level, which will potentially expand the number of posts that are available. Given the type of countries and education systems, it is likely that we will have more, for example, skilled chefs, who would be considered to be at level RQF3 and not RQF6.

[Kevin Foster]

I appreciate the sentiment. Traditionally the MAC has only operated on commission, when the Home Secretary or the Immigration Minister asks it to look at something. We are in the process of appointing a new chair of the Migration Advisory Committee, and we are looking at how it can work on a more predictable cycle. The call for evidence on the shortage occupation list is open, and with the skills threshold changing, we need to update the list for 1 January 2021. I would certainly encourage any organisations that the hon. Member is in contact with to make submissions, given the quite significant change, which will allow a wider range of practical skills, not just the purely academic skills that the list inevitably reflects by setting the bar at degree level. Senior careworker is a good example of a position that we expect to be between RQF3 and RQF6, rather than not qualifying, and it is worth remembering that that list will apply on a global basis.

Returning to the amendment, it is important to distinguish between those who need protection and those seeking to come here to work, who can apply for a work visa under the immigration rules. Our wider immigration policy could be undermined if there was an incentive for individuals to try to bypass the work visa rules by lodging wholly unfounded asylum claims in the United Kingdom.

Secondly, unrestricted access to employment opportunities may also act as an incentive for more people to choose to come here illegally, rather than claiming asylum in the first safe country they reach, particularly within the European Union. We cannot have a policy that increases that risk, even though it has to be said that clearly an EEA citizen would not be fleeing war or persecution.

[Kate Green]

I understand the fear that the Minister is expressing, but does he accept that all meta-analysis of countries that offer asylum seekers a right to work shows that they experience no increase in asylum-seeking, or no relatively higher rate of asylum-seeking, than countries that do not offer such a right?

[Kevin Foster]

As I touched on, there is some ability to work for those whose claims have been delayed for a significant period of time, but we are not satisfied, given what we have seen with past attempts to use parts of the migration system to avoid the restrictions or avoid having to come through the appropriate process to work here, that what the hon. Lady said would not be the case. We cannot readily dismiss the impact that removing such restrictions would have, nor its impact on our capacity to support genuine refugees who are in need of our protection, given that our system also has to deal with those claims that are unfounded and are more about intending to acquire a right to work in the United Kingdom.

I will take this opportunity to make it clear that I acknowledge the well expressed concerns of Opposition Members. The Government are committed to ensuring that asylum claims are considered without unnecessary delay, to ensure that individuals who need protection are granted asylum as soon as possible and can start to rebuild their lives. As the hon. Member for Halifax will know, once someone is granted asylum they are given immediate and unrestricted access to the labour market.

I heard the points that were made eloquently by the hon. Members for Coventry North West, and for Stretford and Urmston about the time that it can take to make some of these decisions. That is also a concern for me as a Minister and for the Government, because if people have a founded claim, we want it brought to a resolution as quickly as possible, so that they can move on and rebuild their lives. Similarly, if a claim is wholly unfounded or based on—if I might put it this way—inaccurate information being provided by the applicant, we want to come to a speedy decision to facilitate their removal from the United Kingdom, to ensure that our system is fair as well as firm.

The new service standard for asylum applications, which is intended to try to bring back some balance to the system, is currently being developed. UK Visas and Immigration is engaging with stakeholders as part of these plans and considering any insight that those stakeholders offer as it tries to shape a new service standard, which was touched on by the hon. Member for Coventry North West, as a start in attempting to tackle some of these issues.

Finally, the hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston asked about the review commissioned under a previous Home Secretary. We are in the process of reviewing the right-to-work policy, with officials looking at the body of evidence available. Therefore, it would be inappropriate for me to comment further until that review is complete, other than to say that that process is ongoing.

Having made those comments, the Government cannot accept the amendment and we hope that it will be withdrawn.

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

Kate Green Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee Debate: 3rd sitting: House of Commons
Thursday 11th June 2020 Public Bill Committees

[Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Edward. I would like to ask the Minister some questions about paragraph 6 of schedule 1, which potentially disapplies any retained EU law relating to the immigration context. It is a similar set of questions to those we were discussing a moment ago in relation to amendment 18, but with a different focus. It arises from evidence that was given to us on Tuesday afternoon by Adrian Berry on behalf of the Immigration Law Practitioners’ Association, which I thank for its help in preparing for this Committee.

I apologise that it was not possible to get an amendment tabled on this paragraph. As my hon. Friend the Member for Halifax pointed out, we have been doing a number of things in relation to this Bill at a rush, and we did not have the transcript of Tuesday afternoon’s sitting until last night. I am very grateful to the Hansard writers for the work they have been doing—I know they have a lot of Bills on—but that has caused part of our problem.

My concern is that the breadth of the wording in paragraph 6 could lead to the repeal of legal protections that go far beyond the realm of free movement, which is the purpose of this Bill. I hope the Minister may be able to put some assurances on the record in relation to my concerns about the Government’s future intentions. As we heard a few moments ago, certain provisions of EU law, as retained EU law, have been brought within UK law by a number of different instruments—some EU law has been brought into domestic law through statutory instruments and so forth. They are saved by section 2 of the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018. Direct EU legislation is saved as retained EU law by section 3 of the 2018 Act. It is explicitly defined and does not include treaties or directives; it is things such as EU regulations with direct applicability.

Any other powers, liabilities, obligations, restrictions, remedies and procedures that could be enforced in the UK because of EU law are carried over by section 4 of the 2018 Act. That includes things like treaties and directives that are directly effective. It is, however, important to note that section 4(2)(b) limits the enforceability of directives to the extent that retained EU law is only the rights, powers, liabilities, obligations, restrictions, remedies or procedures arising under an EU directive that are of a kind that have been recognised by the European Court or any court or tribunal in the United Kingdom in a case decided before the end of the transition period.

Paragraph 6 of schedule 1 disapplies those provisions of EU law to the extent that they are either inconsistent with or otherwise incapable of affecting the interpretation, application or operation of any provision made by or under the Immigration Acts, or otherwise capable of affecting the exercise of functions in connection with immigration. The problem is that the carve-out basically all EU immigration law retained by virtue of paragraph 4, because

“capable of affecting the exercise of functions in connection with immigration”

could basically mean just about anything. The question I am asking the Minister is what EU law that paragraph applies to. What exactly are the Government trying to target?

We get some help from paragraphs 68 and 69 of the explanatory notes to the Bill, which suggest the Government may be trying to affect what we have come to call derived rights cases, in the free movement context. For example, cases of so-called Zambrano carers. These are situations where the European Court has recognised that, because of rights within the European treaties available to European nationals, certain rights must be given to those nationals and their family members or carers in order to ensure that the European national can actually enjoy their EU rights. I accept that, if one is trying to get rid of free movement, as the Bill is, these categories would need to be removed from UK law. That is exactly what ending free movement means, but if that is the scope of the Government’s intentions, it should be much clearer in the Bill.

Unfortunately, paragraph 6 goes much wider than that, addressing not only provisions made under the Immigration Acts, as the Minister suggested a few moments ago, but any matter capable of being seen as in connection with immigration. That could include, for example, the anti-trafficking directive, which prohibits removal of a victim of trafficking if they never received sufficient support and assistance under article 11 of the directive. Other directives that could be caught under involving the exercise of functions in connection with immigration include the reception conditions directive, which supports asylum seekers, the EU victims’ rights directive, and potentially others.

One way of protecting all these directives would be simply to say that paragraph 6 of schedule 1 does not affect directives that form part of retained EU law. After all, the Government’s own explanatory notes do not identify any directives that they wish to disapply in the immigration context, even though I accept that the list in paragraph 69 is described as non-exhaustive. Alternatively, the Government could list the directives specifically to be protected, as set out in the explanatory notes, directly within schedule 1 of the Bill.

I have to say that if the Government do not follow either of those paths, vital protections for vulnerable people could be at risk of becoming collateral damage in the ending of free movement. I am absolutely not suggesting that the Government intend to remove those protections, but if they do not intend that, I hope the Minister can give us clear assurances to that effect today and explain why they appear to fall within the scope of the Bill as drafted.

As things stand, the breadth of the language in paragraphs 6 and a lack of sufficient objective parameters to ascertain its intended targets make it impossible to accurately predict which areas of retained EU law could be affected by the Bill. That is exactly the problem we were discussing a moment ago in relation to paragraph 4. It raises fundamental legal concerns. Migrants and their representatives, Home Office caseworkers and judges must be able to ascertain with a reasonable degree of certainty what the law is. Indeed, that is one of the core lessons learned from the Windrush review carried out by Wendy Williams. I do not believe that this provision meets that standard.

[Kevin Foster]

I thank the hon. Lady for her speech and her interest in this section of the Bill. To be clear, paragraph 6 disapplies the directly effective rights deriving from the EU law that will form part of retained EU law at the end of the transition period if they are inconsistent with immigration legislation or affect immigration practices. They are being repealed so that people cannot in the future attempt to rely on such directly effective rights to bypass the system to enter and reside in the UK, other than under the points-based system. We have been clear that provision will be made in the EU settlement scheme for those currently exercising their EU derivative right of residence in the UK, and that has now been provided, as I touched on.

Some people have asked for examples of rights that paragraph 6 would disapply. They include the rights of Turkish nationals to preferential immigration treatment under the European Economic Community-Turkey association agreement. They also include, as the hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston said, derivative rights of residents under EU law such as Zambrano carers, and the Chen, Ibrahim and Teixeira cases, which will cease from the day that paragraph 6 comes into force. Those rights stem directly from the treaty on the functioning of the EU and need to be disapplied because otherwise people could continue to cite and rely on them to bypass the future immigration system.

The Government do not intend to use the provisions to avoid our responsibilities under international law. We are very clear that our system of protection routes will continue to operate separately from the system of migration rules, as they always have. Family migration will not form part of the points-based system; it will be based on the family migration rules. The wording has to be the way it is so that the paragraph is not too wide in scope. This is about citing it in relation to immigration—trying to cite an EU right to work in the UK rather than applying the provision in a situation where we would, for example, be breaching our international obligations. As I said during the evidence session on Tuesday, under statutory instruments and regulations, Ministers cannot act against international law. We could have a long constitutional debate about whether Parliament can still pass primary legislation in relation to international law, but that is probably not relevant to this particular schedule.

In essence, the schedule is about being clear that it will not be possible to use a range of rights to undermine the points-based immigration system that we are putting in place. We want to make it clear that EEA and non-EEA citizens should look to migrate under the points-based system.

Question put, That the schedule be the First schedule to the Bill.

--- Later in debate ---

I very much hope that the Minister has reflected on that request.

[Kate Green]

Amendment 15, tabled in my name and those of my hon. Friends, aims to place the welfare of children at the heart of the way in which Ministers exercise their powers under clause 4. Children’s wellbeing is of central importance, both in UK law and to comply with our international obligations. We are a signatory to the UN convention on the rights of the child and to the global compact on migration, which contains 38 paragraphs on the welfare and treatment of children.

Domestically, the Children Act 1989 sets out the principle of the paramountcy of the welfare of children in matters relating to their care. Section 55 of the Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Act 2009 provides that immigration functions must be discharged with regard to the need to safeguard and promote the welfare of children who are in the United Kingdom. With all that in place, the Committee may feel that we already have a framework that adequately protects children’s interests in immigration matters. However, the powers conferred on Ministers by clause 4 are very broad, and the way in which they are exercised could have a significant impact on children, whose best interests could be overlooked.

My amendment would embed protection against that happening as freedom of movement is ended. It would ensure that policies and rules introduced under the provisions of clause 4 can have no detrimental effect on the children of EEA and Swiss nationals who are resident in the United Kingdom, and would require the Secretary of State to publish and lay before Parliament a statement to explain why he or she is satisfied that that is the case.

The loss of free movement rights in the Bill means that some EEA national children will inevitably fall within the ambit of immigration legislation in the future. Some will be new arrivals to the UK, and others will have been here already but failed to secure the status to which they are entitled, becoming undocumented and subject to the compliant environment as a consequence.

Let me say a word briefly about the children who are at risk of being detrimentally affected, starting with those already in the UK who may none the less have failed to secure status. The number of such children could be substantial. The Refugee and Migrant Children’s Consortium estimates that there were as many as 751,000 non-Irish EEA and Swiss national children in the UK in 2019, but only 415,140 grants of status were made to children under the EU settlement scheme as at the end of March this year. Some of those children will be very vulnerable. My hon. Friends and I tabled new clause 58, which would secure status for looked-after children and young people leaving care, and I hope the Committee will have the opportunity to debate it in the days to come.

The impact of the Bill’s provision on those eligible for status who fail to apply is not limited to looked-after children alone. For example, parents may not understand whether their UK-born children are automatically British, whether they need to apply to register as British, or whether they should apply to the EU settlement scheme. The complexity of the system and the lack of access to advice means that some children may miss out on getting status or fail to obtain the highest status to which they are entitled. Some may be granted only pre-settled status and will need to be reminded to apply for settled status after five years or risk losing their right to remain in the UK.

Another group of children about whom I am concerned is those who have been in custody. Like adults, children applying to the EU settlement scheme are affected by time spent in custody. As well as not counting towards the five-year qualification period for settled status, periods in custody also reset the clock. Any child who spends time in custody will have to recommence their journey to qualify for settled or pre-settled status upon their release. That represents a troubling anomaly in the treatment of children who offend. Our criminal justice system generally takes the view that juvenile criminal behaviour should be treated differently from adult criminal behaviour, but that is not the case in relation to the EU settlement scheme. Is the Minister able to say how many children have been or may be unable to secure settled status as a result of that provision?

The examples I have cited are just that: examples. Any EEA and Swiss national children who do not secure status—those who were born here and those arriving in the future—could be affected by rules that may be introduced under the powers in clause 4. Hon. Members have already identified a number of potential harmful effects on EEA nationals, including children, as a result of the abolition of free movement and the imposition of new or more stringent rules. Some are reflected in the amendments and new clauses we have tabled and include the impact of fees and charges on citizenship applications; data-sharing policies; the application of income thresholds for the admission of family measures, including parents and children; no recourse to public funds conditions, which can affect children; the position of unaccompanied asylum-seeking children; and provisions relating to detention, deportation and removal. As we discussed earlier, schedule 1 may disapply certain provisions of EU law or EU-derived rights, and that, too, could affect children in some cases, such as those who are victims of crime or trafficking.

In all those circumstances, my amendment would provide assurance that the impact of any rules made using the powers in clause 4 would be subject to the requirement that they have no detrimental effect on the children of EEA and Swiss nationals resident in the UK, whatever led them to be here and whatever their status while here.

The second limb of my amendment refers to the requirement to produce a report to Parliament, which would impel the Home Office to develop processes to undertake a systematic assessment of the impact on children of any planned new immigration rules, which does not appear to happen routinely at the moment. Such an approach would also underpin a best interests approach to the application of immigration rules in individual decisions, buttressing the provisions of section 55 of the Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Act. Again, there is little sign that a systematic approach to children’s best interests is embedded in Home Office decision making, and the requirement for immigration rules to protect children’s rights and interests must be supported in the design of decision-making processes and appropriate staff training. I hope the Minister will accept my amendment.

[Stuart C. McDonald]

I apologise, Sir Edward, but in my excitement over the Henry VIII clause and various other delegated powers, I forgot to speak to amendment 22, so I will speak to it briefly. It is slightly different from the amendments I spoke to earlier, which sought to rein in the powers the Home Office is trying to give itself in clause 4. Amendment 22 is more about setting out some guidance as to how those powers should be used, and to set out some principles. I, and I dare say any MP, could come up with 10 or 20 principles by which we would like the Home Office to abide. I have discussed these proposals with Amnesty International and they are good examples of the sort of framework we should provide at the Home Office, rather than giving it a blank cheque to introduce whatever system it sees fit.

The first of the amendment’s five principles is that these rules should be exercised to promote family life. Why have we allowed the Government to deliver tens of thousands of what England’s Children’s Commissioner called “Skype families”, separated by some of the most draconian anti- family migration rules in the world? Why did we watch as the Home Office simply withdrew the concession that generally allowed families with children who had been here seven years to settle permanently? The amendment would lay down a principle that would guide the Home Office to exercise its delegated functions in a way that promotes family life rather than undermining it.

The second principle relates to appeal rights. Everyone in this room believes in the rule of law, a facet of which is that a person should have a ready and accessible means of challenging their removal from the country in which they have made their home. To disagree with that simple proposition would be to ignore some of the key lessons from Windrush.

Thirdly, we need to stop putting so many people through a tortuous process before they have security of residence in this country. If people have been here for years on end, especially during childhood, why are we charging them many thousands of pounds over a 10-year period, with application after application after application? It is a disaster for the families affected and a total waste of Home Office time and resource. Let people move on.

Fourthly, if people are here for family reasons and fall on hard times, do we really want to say that they will just have to suffer and that the safety net we provide for others in a similar situation should not be available to them? If people are here to accompany family, why are we saying to them that they have to put their lives on hold and that they cannot seek work? These features of our immigration system are regressive, counter-productive and, frankly, prehistoric.

Finally the fifth principle is about treating people fairly and not pulling the rug from under their feet once they are here. Of course, rules and policies will change from time to time, but it is highly regrettable that we allow people to come to the UK on a particular visa route and then change the rules so that they apply not just to new people coming in but to those who are already here, making it difficult, if not impossible, for them to remain. A perfect example was the change to the financial threshold for tier 2 visa holders seeking settlement. Imagine if someone has been here for three or four years and met all the salary requirements, only for the Home Office to then say, with a year to go, “This was the salary threshold you had before, but actually we have upped it by £5,000 or £6,000 or £7,000.” That is a retrospective rule change, and it is totally unfair to operate it in that way.

I could have added many more principles to those I would like to see guiding the Home Office. These principles say that if we are going to give the Home Office these powers, we want them to be exercised in the interests of family, the rule of law and stability, protecting against retrospective rule changes and providing financial security. For too long, the Home Office has disregarded those principles. It is time that we as MPs say that it should stop doing that.

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

Kate Green Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee Debate: 5th sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 16th June 2020 Public Bill Committees

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Kevin Foster)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Edward. Given the nature of the clause, I will spend a few minutes outlining its impact to the Committee. The clause and associated schedules 2 and 3 provide an essential legislative framework to ensure that the Government can make changes to our social security system when the transition period ends, alongside the launch of the future immigration system. The provisions will enable the Government to amend the retained European Union social security co-ordination rules and to deliver policy changes from the end of the transition period.

The clause provides a power to the Secretary of State, the Treasury or, where appropriate, a devolved authority to modify the social security co-ordination regulations. Those EU regulations provide for social security co-ordination across the European economic area, and will be incorporated into domestic law by the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018 at the end of the transition period. Clause 5(4) gives the Government the ability to make necessary consequential changes to other primary legislation and other retained EU law to ensure that the changes given effect by the main power are appropriately reflected. That power may be used, for example, to address technical matters, inoperabilities or inconsistencies. Schedule 2 sets out the power of the devolved authorities under clause 5.

This social security co-ordination clause confers powers on Scottish Ministers and the relevant Northern Ireland Department to amend the limited elements of the social security co-ordination regulations that fall within devolved competence. It is important that we provide the devolved Administrations with the powers that they need to amend the aspects of the regulations for which they are responsible, just as it is right for the UK Government to have the powers for the laws that affect the UK as a whole. The powers are equivalent to those conferred on UK Ministers and will allow the devolved Administrations to respond to the UK’s withdrawal from the EU in areas of devolved competence, either to keep parity with Westminster or to deviate in line with their own policies.

Without the powers in the Bill, the devolved Administrations would need to bring forward their own parallel legislation to give them equivalent powers to amend the retained EU social security co-ordination regulations in areas of devolved competence. Before the Bill was introduced, letters were sent to the devolved Administrations to seek legislative consent in principle, in line with the Sewel convention.

Schedule 3 provides further detail on the form that regulations will take under the clause, whether as statutory instruments, statutory rules or Scottish statutory instruments. The schedule provides that the use of the power is subject to the affirmative procedure. It also gives clarity on the procedures that the devolved Administrations will need to follow. Paragraph 5 permits other regulations, subject to the negative procedure, to be included in an instrument made under the clause.

Without the clause and associated schedules 2 and 3, the Government and relevant devolved authorities will have only the power contained in the 2018 Act to fix deficiencies in the retained system of social security co-ordination, restricting our ability to make changes. I reassure the Committee that the power in the clause will not be exercised to remove or reduce commitments made either in relation to individuals within the scope of the withdrawal agreement, for as long as they remain in the scope of that agreement, or in relation to British and Irish nationals moving between the UK and Ireland.

We are currently in negotiations with the EU about possible new reciprocal arrangements on social security co-ordination, of the kind that the UK has with countries outside the EU. The clause will enable the UK to respond to a variety of outcomes in those negotiations, including when no agreement is achieved by the end of the transition period. The clause will be necessary to deliver policy changes to the retained regime that will cover individuals who fall outside the scope of the withdrawal agreement, to reflect the reality of our new relationship with the European Union.

The Government have been clear that there will be changes to future social security co-ordination arrangements, including, as announced at Budget 2020, stopping the export of child benefit. The social security co-ordination powers in the Bill will enable the Government to deliver on that commitment and to respond to the outcome of negotiations with the EU to deliver changes from the end of the transition period. I therefore beg to move that clause 5 stands part of the Bill and that schedules 2 and 3 are agreed to.

[Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

Good morning, Sir Edward. It is a pleasure once again to serve under your chairmanship. Social security arrangements set out in EU regulation 883 of 2004 and elsewhere are currently directly applicable in the UK. They cover the co-ordination of social security, healthcare and pension provision for people who are publicly insured who move from one EU state to another.

The regulations ensure that individuals who move to another EEA are covered by the social security legislation of only one country at a time and are, therefore, liable only to make contributions in one country; that a person has the rights and obligations of the member state where they are covered; that periods of insurance, employment or residence in other member states can be taken into account when determining a person’s eligibility for benefits; and that a person can receive benefits that they are entitled to from one member state, even if they are resident in another.

The co-ordination regulations cover only those social security benefits that provide cover against certain categories of social risk, such as sickness, maternity, paternity, unemployment and old age. Some non-contributory benefits fall within the regulations but cannot be exported, and benefits that are social and medical assistance are not covered at all. Universal credit, for example, is excluded.

As we heard from Jeremy Morgan of British in Europe in his oral evidence to the Committee last week, most UK nationals resident in the EU are of working age. It is important to note that the number of people claiming the working-age benefits that are covered by the regulations—jobseeker’s allowance or employment and support allowance—has declined sharply since the introduction of universal credit. We might therefore expect social security co-ordination arrangements to apply to a declining number of working-age adults. The regulations will, however, still be of importance for a sizeable number of individuals, and not least for pensioners.

The co-ordination regulations also confer a right on those with a European health insurance card to access medically necessary state-provided healthcare during a temporary state in another EEA state. The home member state is normally required to reimburse the host country for the cost of the treatment. Under the European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Act 2020, protection of healthcare entitlements is linked to entitlement to cash benefits.

Clause 5(1) provides an appropriate authority with the power to modify the co-ordination regulations by secondary legislation. The power is very broad, placing no limits on the modifications that appropriate authorities are able to make to the co-ordination regulations. By virtue of subsection (3), the power explicitly

“includes power—

(a) to make different provision for different categories of person to whom they apply…

(b) otherwise to make different provision for different purposes;

(c) to make supplementary…consequential, transitional, transitory or saving provision;

(d) to provide for a person to exercise a discretion in dealing with any matter.”

The power is further enhanced by subsection (4), which provides for the ability to amend or repeal

“primary legislation passed before, or in the same Session as, this Act”

and other retained direct EU legislation.

Since the UK left the EU at the end of January this year, the relevant EU regulations pertaining to social security, pensions and healthcare have been retained in UK law by section 3 of the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018. I accept that the Government need to be able to amend co-ordination regulations to remedy deficiencies in them resulting from the UK’s exit from the EU, but the 2018 Act already contains a power in section 8 to modify direct retained EU law. Indeed, the Government have already exercised this power for four of the co-ordination regulations. Any changes that do not fall within the scope of the power in section 8 of the 2018 Act must necessarily, therefore, not relate to any ability for the law to operate efficiently or to remedy defects, but be intended to achieve wider policy objectives. I think the Minister acknowledged as much in his opening comments.

I was, however, surprised that the Minister said that only the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018 provided such powers. My reading of the legislation is that the Secretary of State has further powers as regards social security, healthcare and pension rights for those who are protected by the withdrawal agreement under the European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Act 2020. Section 5 of that Act inserts new section 7A into the 2018 Act so as to secure withdrawal agreement rights in domestic law, and that protection is buttressed by section 13 of the 2020 Act, which confers a power to make regulations in respect of social security co-ordination rights protected by the withdrawal agreement. Given the powers that already exist under the European Union (Withdrawal) Act and the European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Act, as well as the fact that those powers have already been used by the Government, why does the Minister feel they are inadequate?

Paragraph 30 of the delegated powers memorandum is instructive. It states that the Government want to use the power in clause 5 to

“respond flexibly to the outcome of negotiations on the future framework and make changes to the retained social security co-ordination rules.”

[Mr Robert Goodwill (Scarborough and Whitby) (Con)]

Does the hon. Lady agree that, given the proliferation of judicial reviews and the test cases that often come forward, it is better to adopt a belt-and-braces approach so that we underline the Government’s intention in both the Bill and the withdrawal Act?

[Kate Green]

The issue is the mission creep and scope creep involved in using secondary legislation to amend primary legislation and retained EU rights, particularly a mission creep that now encompasses the ability to make significant policy changes.

As we heard in oral evidence from our witnesses last week, it is important to recognise the considerable importance of policy and legislation in relation to social security co-ordination. It is vital to labour mobility, and to protect the rights of EEA nationals who come to live in the UK and UK nationals who go to live in EEA member states. Policy in this area has the potential to impact the lives of millions, affecting their right to receive benefits to which they are entitled through national insurance contributions over periods of residency, and which they have a legitimate expectation that they will receive. Changes to policy in these important areas should, I submit, be given effect in primary legislation.

In response to the evidence that the Committee took from British in Europe last week, the Minister said that the Secretary of State could not make regulations that would breach an international treaty, and he offered some reassurances this morning to those who fall within the scope of the withdrawal agreement. However, as British in Europe pointed out last week, the powers in clause 5 mean that Parliament will not be able to properly scrutinise regulations that might breach our international treaty obligations—if not deliberately, then inadvertently.

The Minister also referred to the need to be able to reflect the ongoing negotiations with the European Union, and we heard from Adrian Berry of the Immigration Law Practitioners Association last week about the UK’s draft social security treaty, which is an annex to the Government’s proposed future trade agreement. Mr Berry highlighted the Government’s intention to continue the protection of the European health insurance card scheme for short-term travel and the uprating of old-age pensions, but noted that disability pensions and healthcare attached to pension rights are missing from the draft treaty. He also highlighted the limitations of the new EHIC, which would require those with long-term health needs to get prior authorisation from the UK Government, and that there would be no S2 cover, which enables people to obtain healthcare in the EU that they cannot get on the NHS in the UK. Will the Minister put on the record whether such changes could be introduced using clause 5, and can he confirm which classes of person they can be applied to?

The Government have argued that the use of the powers in clause 5 will be subject to parliamentary scrutiny, through the use of the affirmative procedure. Will the Social Security Advisory Committee have a role in scrutinising regulations introduced under this measure? Does he not in fact accept that changes in this important area require full debate and scrutiny in Parliament, and that the principles of any future policy should be set out in primary legislation?

Finally, clause 5(5) states that EU-derived rights cease to apply if they are “inconsistent” with any regulation made under the section, but the Government are under no obligation to specify where and when such inconsistencies arise. This creates considerable uncertainty for individuals who are affected, for their advisers, and indeed for politicians and the wider public. As we discussed last week on clause 4, such an approach is inimical to good lawmaking. The Government should spell out which parts of retained EU law might be affected by these provisions, and I hope that the Minister will do so in his response.

[Stuart C. McDonald (Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship again, Sir Edward.

I am grateful to the Minister and to the hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston for setting out the nature of these regulations in quite some detail, and also for explaining why they are hugely significant for a large number of people.

We acknowledge that there is a need for the appropriate authorities to have some powers in this area, but those powers should be focused on making technical fixes rather than providing carte blanche. The powers in the clause are hugely broad. In fact, they are basically without any limit, either in terms of scope or time, and it is worth reflecting on what exactly clause 5(1) says:

“An appropriate authority may by regulations modify the retained direct EU legislation mentioned in subsection (2).”

There is no constraining test at all.

As Adrian Berry argued when he gave evidence last Tuesday, all these clauses should at least have the test of being “appropriate”, if not being “necessary”, as a qualification. Opposition MPs have been championing the “necessary” test, but the Government have always preferred the test of appropriateness. However, even that is absent from the clause. On paper, therefore, we are creating powers to make inappropriate regulations, which seems quite an unusual concept. More than ever, we need reassurance on what exactly the intended use of these regulations is, and we will look carefully at what the Minister said about that this morning.

I also want to raise an issue on schedule 2, which the Minister also referred to. Schedule 2 sets out who can make use of the powers in clause 5, and I want to flag up an issue in relation to devolution that needs to be addressed. It was flagged up by the Scottish Parliament’s Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee last year in relation to the predecessor Bill. The Committee reported on that Bill precisely because there are implications for some devolved competences around social security.

There are three routes by which the clause’s powers could be used in relation to devolved social security competence. First, Scottish Ministers could exercise these powers, sometimes with the requirement to consult UK Ministers, if that were required where a different route was used to achieve the same means. The Committee found those powers acceptable.

There is also a route for joint exercise of the powers, which would be considered where a change is so significant that it would be appropriate for joint exercise and scrutiny. Again, while the Committee sought some clarity on precisely when that route would be used, it supported the idea in principle.

Thirdly, however, there is the route of UK Ministers acting alone, by laying regulations in the UK Parliament that could still relate to devolved competence. The Committee’s report says:

“The Committee emphasises that as a matter of principle the Scottish Parliament should have the opportunity to scrutinise the exercise of legislative powers”

by the Executive. However, it notes that the Scottish Parliament has no formal role in relation to the scrutiny of secondary legislation passed by UK Ministers acting alone.

The Committee went on to note that there was silence in relation to the circumstances in which it would be appropriate for UK Ministers to exercise powers in relation to devolved social security acting on their own. It noted that there was nothing on the face of the Bill requiring UK Ministers to seek the consent of Scottish Ministers prior to the exercise of the powers in that way by relevant UK Ministers or the Treasury. It repeated the view that it had provided in relation to the Bill that went on to become the European Union (Withdrawal) Act—that UK Ministers should be able to legislate in devolved areas only with the consent of the devolved Administration, also advocating for a role for the Scottish Parliament in that process.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kevin Foster]

To be clear, we will continue with our position of respecting devolution in areas of social security, hence the respect we have shown to the Scottish Government by consulting them about the Bill. We have also set out the Government’s position, were there not a legislative consent motion from the Scottish Parliament, in the letter we sent last week to the relevant Scottish Ministers. Obviously, separate discussions are going on with the Executive in Northern Ireland.

This is the right process. Parliament still has the appropriate ability to scrutinise how the powers are used and, if it wishes, may block the use of those powers under the affirmative procedure. This is about ensuring clear certainty that we can deliver whatever we can agree with the European Union on, we hope, a continuation of a reciprocal arrangement, which we cannot do if we do not have the powers in the clause. In other areas, powers are more restricted.

These are wide powers, but that reflects the wide range of outcomes that are still possible in the next six months. It is right to have a functioning and effective social security system and co-ordination of it. That is why the Government have brought the power forward in this Bill, as in the previous one. We maintain that the clause and the attached schedules are appropriate to the Bill.

[Kate Green]

Does the Minister anticipate, in the event of an agreement and treaty before the end of this year, a further piece of primary legislation to give effect to that? If so, would it not be possible at least to encompass the principles agreed into that primary legislation?

[Kevin Foster]

A lot would depend on the nature of the agreement. If it is part of a wider treaty, we may well see further legislation. However, our understanding is that if we can achieve agreement on this area, we would look to implement it rapidly through regulation, which is why the power is in the Bill. Our priority would be to avoid a situation where something is agreed of benefit to both UK citizens going to live in the European Union and EEA citizens coming to live here, with which we and the European Union are happy, but we are unable to provide that benefit because we are still going through a parliamentary process to implement it. That is why we believe the clause to be appropriate. It allows us to react to circumstances as necessary.

Question put, That the clause stand part of the Bill.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kate Green]

I support the sentiments expressed by the hon. Members for Argyle and Bute and for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East. There have been considerable benefits to our faith communities from their ability to take advantage of freedom of movement and welcome EEA nationals into their communities. Faith communities, especially Churches of all denominations, have congregations with many EEA nationals among their membership and they are also often individuals who act as pastors, counsellors, youth workers and musicians.

As we have heard, many faith organisations have needed EEA nationals to cover short-term or sometimes longer-term appointments into leadership positions. That is especially true in areas where it has been hard to recruit. Free movement has also allowed faith communities some flexibility in terms of shared mission work, with UK nationals working overseas, undertaking mission trips, musicians performing in Europe at faith-based events or running camps and youth conferences. Faith communities have been able to bring EEA speakers and volunteers to help communities and to run events without the associated costs and rules around visitor visas and the tier system.

There will be a number of consequences for those communities as a result of the loss of free movement. First, while many faith groups have been effective in pointing their members to the EU settlement scheme where that is relevant, uncertainty remains about the scheme, what it means for families, for continuity of residence and for faith communities who are trying to keep people in their communities.

Faith communities looking to employ or to bring in volunteers from the EEA will now have to navigate the tier system, as they would for non-EEA nationals. As we heard, that brings complexity. With the greatest of respect to the right hon. Member for Scarborough and Whitby, I do not think it is the case that all faith communities have found that an easy system to navigate or to get the relevant approvals. There are also significant additional costs for sponsorship licences and visas. Indeed, it will not be cheap, especially when we include the additional NHS surcharge. A religious worker will be able to stay for up to two years. The cost for a one-year visa before administration costs is around £244, plus the NHS surcharge of £624, added to that the sponsorship licence fee and associated costs. On top of that, the community will have to fund any dependant costs and may also be providing the cost of flights, accommodation and training for the religious workers, and sometimes a small stipend. For smaller faith communities, that starts to become a very significant expense.

Many faith communities that rely on overseas workers tend to be found in the poorer parts of the UK. Poorer communities and poorer congregations are part of a poorer overall landscape and so the faith organisation itself will be less well resourced. It cannot draw on a wealthy congregation. That has a particular impact on smaller denominations and diaspora Churches, which will find that the loss of free movement will mean that poorer communities, who could benefit most from additional pastoral support, will feel the impact the harshest.

Proof of savings is difficult for some orders, which have vows of poverty, making it difficult for individuals to prove they can sustain themselves even if the order will cover all their living arrangements. If a person is needed quickly to cover a gap—the hon. Members for Argyle and Bute and for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East talked about the potential absence of a priest for a range of personal reasons—the procedure will now mean that there will be delay in bringing in that cover. I am not talking here about roles that fall short of being a full minister of religion, but there are roles that will still involve some level of religious duty. For example, there continues to be uncertainty about those coming in to work with children, and about pastoral work and preaching, and an understanding of the definitions of what those roles encompass, which is a particular issue with some particular faiths of particular traditions.

There is also a concern, as I have said, among faith communities that bring in musicians who may be self-employed and who may work in multiple settings. As the hon. Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East pointed out, seminaries that conduct formation in English are not necessarily regarded as meeting the English language requirement.

I hope the whole Committee will agree about the benefits of facilitating religious workers to come in to support our faith communities. In that spirit, I will ask the Minister a number of questions. What assessment have the Government made of the level of upscaling needed in the Home Office to process additional sponsorship licences for the purposes of ministers of religion or religious workers, or charity workers and faith communities, due to the removal of free movement?

Echoing the hon. Member for Argyll and Bute, what conversations are the Home Office having with faith groups regarding preparation for the immigration system that will affect them post-December? What help will be provided with regard to navigating sponsorship licences and understanding the costs that faith communities will have to meet?

At times, non-EEA nationals who have wanted to come to the UK for a short-term conference or to speak at an event have been denied visas; I have seen that in my own constituency. What assurance can the Minister give to faith communities that EEA nationals entering the UK for a conference or event for short-term study will not be restricted from doing so, and that appropriate decision-making will take place?

Will the Minister commit to reviewing the definitions of “minister of religion” and “religious worker”, and actively consult a wide variety of denominations and faith communities? What will the Home Office do to improve faith literacy among decision makers? I have to say that the asylum system has not given me much confidence that religious literacy in decision-making is where it needs to be.

What assessment have the Government made of the impact on creatives, such as musicians used by faith communities? Will they still be able to come to the UK? Will those in a different visa route be able to transfer if they take on a role in a faith community? For example, could someone who has arrived in the UK as a student transfer routes if they become a religious worker? Will it be possible for individuals to come to the UK as volunteers in faith communities and, if so, what restrictions will be applied to their activities? What discussions have the Government had with faith communities about their responsibility to carry out right-to-work checks?

This is an important issue for an important element of all our communities. I do not think the Government intend the impact of the removal of free movement to harm the operation of our faith communities, but the changes will cause real difficulties across a range of faiths, and particularly in those communities that most need the support that visiting religious workers can provide. I hope the Minister will be able to reassure the Committee.

[Kevin Foster]

I genuinely thank the hon. Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East for tabling this amendment. He always speaks with real passion, even when we disagree, as we did in the last debate, and his comments on this amendment have been no exception. We can perhaps be slightly more consensual now, even if the Government do not agree with the amendment.

I will deal briefly with a couple of points that have just been raised. First, in relation to decisions that would be taken on visitor visas for EEA nationals visiting faith groups, we have already made it very clear that EEA nationals will be non-visa nationals. Therefore, those looking to make visits to the United Kingdom would not be required to apply for a visa. They would be able to come through the e-gates and their visiting experience would be very similar, for example, to that of a New Zealander, a Canadian or a Japanese citizen at the moment, who can come through the e-gates and be granted visit leave. In a moment, I will come on to speak in a little more detail about the range of activities that a visitor can perform.

As a constituency MP, I have similarly sometimes been involved in decisions about faith communities, particularly a couple of years ago, when there needed to be some representations about how the income of Paignton parish church was considered, and whether a medieval church was an established organisation. I was only too happy to vouch that a church built in the 13th century is an established organisation, and that it was not set up for an immigration purpose, for pretty obvious reasons. I am genuinely always happy to hear representations from particular communities about that, as I did in that instance as a constituency MP.

We published the impact assessment for the Bill. I am clear that a lot of the Churches’ right-to-work checks will be the same as now anyway, because they have to do that for EEA citizens and UK nationals. When there is a right-to-work check, every one of us should be asked to present evidence that shows our right to work, as with right-to-rent checks; I recently had to show my passport to comply with those requirements, and rightly so. We are clear that there should be no discrimination there; those checks should be applied irrespective.

On the other points made, similarly, many faith communities, and certainly the larger faith communities present in the United Kingdom, are already sponsors. Much of that will transfer into the new system, so in many ways the experience of non-EEA nationals—non-visa nationals, to be absolutely clear—will be transferred over with the various concessions and opportunities, such as pay, performance, engagement and other items.

On the specific point made by the hon. Member for Argyll and Bute, I do not have officials’ or my predecessors’ diaries to hand, in terms of meetings, but as I met other faith communities at the invitation of Members of Parliament, I am certainly more than happy to meet the Scottish Catholic bishops representatives and to engage and have a conversation with them. They are a key partner. I certainly recognise the valuable social role that many Catholic churches play in communities across the United Kingdom. I am always happy to have a conversation about some of the definitions, particularly around visitor, tier 5 and tier 2. Some things, as I will come on to in a minute, will actually be covered by our visitor provisions, as well as under tier 5. Again, I am happy to have a conversation with them on those points.

I am genuinely grateful to the SNP for initiating this debate, because it gives me the opportunity to put on the record how the Government value the role faith communities play in this country, and more importantly, the contribution that many people who have migrated here have made and are making to the functioning and wellbeing of our faith communities. Faith communities enhance our national life, and they are stronger because people from around the world come and contribute to every aspect of their work, not least in bringing their skills to leadership in communities across the UK, hence why, in our future points-based immigration system, there will continue to be routes for those connected with faith and religion to come to the UK. Within the current immigration system, there are two routes specially designed for them, and this will continue in the future, to assist with consistency.

As referred to already, the tier 2 route for ministers of religion—effectively a skilled worker route—is for religious leaders such as priests, imams and rabbis, as well as missionaries and members of religious orders, taking employment or a role in a faith-based community. They can come for up to three years initially, which they can extend to six years, and they may qualify for settlement—indefinite leave to remain—after five years. Again, those who receive indefinite leave to remain are then exempted from the immigration health surcharge and will also have a permanent unlimited status within the United Kingdom.

Additionally, we have the tier 5 religious workers’ route. It should be clear to the Committee that this was designed with a very different purpose in mind. It permits stays of up to two years and caters for those wishing to undertake supportive, largely non-pastoral roles. In common with all tier 5 categories, as it is temporary at core, there is no English language requirement.

That last point is crucial. As I indicated, we welcome faith leaders from around the world, and in many communities regular conversations and events bring faith communities together in opposition to those who wish to sow the seeds of division between them. It is therefore right that those who want to lead a faith community, which involves both preaching and helping the faith community to interact with the wider community in their leadership role, should have a proper command of English to enable this—especially the valuable inter-faith work that goes on in so many communities.

I think of what happens locally in Torbay, and of the type of exchanges facilitated in the midlands, particularly by Coventry cathedral, given its background in different faiths. Those exchanges really cannot be facilitated if there is not a good command of a working language within the local community.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Goodwill]

I very much sympathise with what the hon. Member for Halifax has just said. There is real concern that EEA nationals who have been working here, contributing not least to our health service, may find themselves missing the deadline. However, I do not agree that the way to address that is through new clause 10, as I made clear to the hon. Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East. Some like myself would always wait until the deadline before submitting an essay or article. By extending the period by six months, we might well just encourage people to put off the chore—as they see it—of applying.

I ask the Minister to reassure us that, as we approach the deadline, the Government will engage in a communications exercise and advertising campaign, particularly in some of the main EU languages, so that people are aware of the deadline and can submit their applications in good time for them to be processed.

[Kate Green]

That is an important point, in particular in relation to those communities, such as the Roma community, that have been hard to reach with information about the scheme. The Government have made some funding available for community organisations to reach such communities, but it would be extremely welcome to follow the suggestion that a particular push be made to communicate with those more remote communities as the deadline approaches

[Mr Goodwill]

The hon. Lady is absolutely right. Indeed, while many EU migrants have made a real effort to integrate and to speak English in their homes, encouraging their children to speak English, others have not assimilated as well and are still speaking their native language, as is their right. It is important that we communicate in those languages.

Perhaps we should also look at how we communicate through schools, because the children of some families who have come from the EU speak very good English, although their parents struggle with it. The children’s secondary schools may be another good way to get through to such families. I hope that the Minister will pick up that point and reassure us that the Government will be making the effort to communicate with the general population, to ensure that we can help our work mates and so on.

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

Kate Green Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee Debate: 6th sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 16th June 2020 Public Bill Committees

[Kevin Foster]

I thank my right hon. Friend for his intervention. I will come on to new clause 32, which is about an annual report on the labour market, in a moment. We are freeing up the MAC to consider matters of interest to it and to provide recommendations on policies, although I expect it will be more nuanced when we come to reports on the labour market overall. That is more to do with the Department for Work and Pensions. We want a coherent strategy where migration is a part of that. We did not want to set it out purely in relation to EEA nationals.

[Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

The difference between the MAC, which, as the Minister rightly says, is interested in labour market trends and developments, and the Social Security Advisory Committee, which the hon. Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East set up as an analogy for the Minister to consider, is that the SSAC looks specifically at the implementation of secondary legislation and advises on new regulations that the Government might introduce. Given the extent of immigration policy introduced in immigration rules, I would suggest that the MAC is not actually set up, and is not even likely to be set up in future, to provide advice to the House on those matters.

[Kevin Foster]

The hon. Lady makes a not unreasonable point. The MAC gives advice on general policies on immigration. For example, it came up with what occupations should be on the shortage occupation list. It does not necessarily draft the legislation. However, the core of what we are driving at is there. I will continue with my speech because there have been significant changes in relation to simplification since an identical Bill was considered in the previous Parliament. Fundamentally, creating a statutory advisory body would simply delay the Government from introducing new consolidated and simplified rules by 1 January 2021, which could cause considerable confusion and ambiguity about which rules apply to EEA citizens once free movement ends.

In any event, the new clause is unnecessary. The Law Commission, in its consultation paper on simplification of the immigration rules, published in January 2019, asked whether an informal consultation or review of the drafting of immigration rules would help to reduce complexity. In its final report, published in January 2020, the Law Commission recommended that the Home Office should convene at regular intervals a committee to review the drafting of the rules in line with the principles recommended by the Law Commission. That is the more nuanced point that the hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston referred to. On 25 March the Government published our response to the Law Commission report and recommendations, and we accepted that recommendation. We included in our response the terms of reference for and membership of the simplification of the rules review committee. To be clear, this covers the whole ambit of the rules, not just those as they relate to EEA nationals.

The committee is, as recommended by the Law Commission, made up of Home Office civil servants, immigration practitioners and organisations representative of non-expert users of the rules, including those representing vulnerable applicants such as children. The review committee meets monthly to advise on the Home Office’s proposals to draft simpler rules and accompanying guidance and how they can be made more accessible online.

I hope that, as we have already established a review committee and its terms of reference and membership are transparent, that will give the hon. Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East the confidence to withdraw new clause 16.

New clause 30 seeks to introduce the super-affirmative procedure for immigration rules. Typically, that procedure is used only for deregulatory orders that amend or repeal primary legislation, such as legislative reform orders or public bodies orders, or remedial orders under the Human Rights Act. In those circumstances, it is right that the highest level of scrutiny should be applied, but it is not appropriate to apply the same procedure in respect of changes to immigration rules, which obviously are not, and cannot amend, primary legislation.

Under the current, well-established procedure, the Government are able to update the immigration rules in a responsive way, to ensure that we have an immigration system that meets the UK’s needs, commands the confidence of the public and reflects the wider economic, social and political context in the UK at any time. Requiring a minimum 60-day standstill period—that would be a minimum, because if, for example, changes were laid in late June, the period would not expire until late October—would severely hamper our ability to make timely and effective changes to the rules to respond to emerging situations.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kevin Foster]

I thank my hon. Friend for reminding us of the evidence that was given. The core of the matter is that our immigration rules need to remain flexible to respond to emerging situations. For example, if the conditions around visas were in primary legislation, we would have to be putting through Acts of Parliament to alter and extend visas in relation to the current covid-19 situation, which none of us would feel was a sensible way of handling that type of thing. In addition, this process has been established for a very long time. Parliament, rightly, can oversee the immigration rules, but they can be flexible and adapt. To be clear, putting forward, effectively, an immigration rules change could not, for example, alter the provisions that we have on Irish citizens in this Bill and in the primary legislation.

[Kate Green]

I just want to make sure that I have understood correctly—I may not have—what the Minister is saying and the provisions of the Bill. I understood him to say that the super-affirmative procedure is appropriate only in circumstances that include amending primary legislation, but is it not the case that the provisions of this Bill give the Government, in some circumstances, the opportunity to do that?

[Kevin Foster]

They do, subject to the affirmative procedure, but that is—as we discussed under previous clauses and particularly in the clause 4 debate—for specified purposes. The measure does not just give us an unending power.

We could not, for example, change our international obligations and some other areas via this method, the use of which relates to the narrower areas of the Bill. It is not a carte blanche to change all primary law that affects immigration law, but applies where it is consequential to the purposes of the Bill.

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

Kate Green Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee Debate: 7th sitting: House of Commons
Thursday 18th June 2020 Public Bill Committees

[Holly Lynch]

I welcome the fairly constructive way in which the Minister has engaged on this point. The points made in intervention by my friend from the SNP, the hon. Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East, do still stand. I reinforce that there will continue to be a desire and unanswered questions in this area. There are certainly merits to committing more of what we have discussed to primary legislation, but I will not press the new clause at this point. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the motion.

Clause, by leave, withdrawn.

New Clause 28

Annual review: Higher education

(1) The Secretary of State must commission an annual report from the Migration Advisory Committee on the impact of the provisions of this Act on the number of overseas students in the UK from the EEA and Switzerland.

(2) The report must be laid before each House of Parliament as soon as possible after it has been completed.

(3) A Minister of the Crown must, not later than three months after the report has been laid before Parliament, make a motion in the House of Commons in relation to the report.—(Kate Green.)

Brought up, and read the First time.

[Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.

It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair again this morning, Sir Edward. The new clause would require the Government to commission an annual report from the Migration Advisory Committee on the impact of the Bill’s provisions on the higher education sector.

As the Committee will know, the UK higher education sector has a world-leading reputation, which helps it to attract international students. The proportion of international students is a measure in most global university rankings, meaning that by choosing to study here, international students contribute directly to the sector’s world standing. Today, 18 of the UK’s universities rank in the world’s top 100, and 76% of UK research is ranked as excellent or world-leading. International staff and students are crucial to the UK’s economic success, and it is important that the UK continues to attract both EU and non-EU students and staff in the future.

International students deliver more than £26 billion to the UK economy. They bring more than £6.9 billion in income to universities in tuition fees. They generated £13 billion of export revenue in 2016, an increase of 41% since 2010. Universities UK estimates that universities supported more than 200,000 jobs and were worth £3.3 billion in tax revenues.

Aside from the direct economic benefits, international students and staff are crucial to the provision of skills, the conducting of research and the culture of the UK’s universities. In 2017-18, UK higher education institutions reported a £4.3 billion deficit between research income received and the costs of delivering research activity. Much of that gap was covered by international tuition fees, so international students are key to the UK’s research capacity.

In 2018-19, there were 485,645 international students enrolled at UK universities, an increase from 436,600 international students in 2014-15. Some 342,620 of those international students—that is 70%—were from outside the European Union. The remaining 143,025 students were from EU countries, but the UK’s market share has dropped in 17 of the world’s top 21 sending countries. The Office for Budget Responsibility has identified higher education as the sector likely to take the hardest hit from the covid crisis.

Given the pressures, it will be vital to understand the impact of immigration policy on future student numbers. The impact assessment attached to the Bill is optimistic, suggesting that a potential reduction in the number of EEA students attending UK universities of 25,000 after the first five years of the new points-based system will be offset by a corresponding increase in non-EEA students.

However, some of the assumptions in the impact assessment are highly speculative—as, indeed, the Government themselves acknowledge. Paragraph 160 of the impact assessment states that

“measures such as proof of funds and employment rights might have an additional deterrent impact—but there is little evidence on which to base an estimate. The impact of any administration cost or visa fee or change to student funding will also impact student choices. Therefore, the estimates presented here will only reflect the potential impacts from changes in immigration policy and not the overall impacts on EU student numbers.”

Paragraphs 163 and 164 state:

“The restrictions on the rights to bring dependants, which will apply to EU students from 2021, may also have an impact on inflows under the future system, as only those who are studying a full-time course which is a least nine months long at a postgraduate level of study are allowed to bring family members to the UK…Applying these potential deterrents, the reduction in EU student inflows are estimated to be around 15,000 per annum in the first five years of the policy.”

In paragraph 165, expected-length-of-study data is applied to the change in inflows, pointing to:

“an estimate of up to 25,000 fewer EU higher education students in the UK by academic year 2024/25 relative to the baseline.”

The paragraph also argues that

“any places not taken by EU students may be occupied by non-EU students, so the overall impact on foreign student numbers is not clear.”

In paragraph 166, the Government estimate that

“non-EU enrolments might increase by up to 10 per cent, depending on the level of study”,

but the paragraph also notes:

“This assumption is very uncertain, not least because other drivers could have affected non-EU inflows over the period of the last post-study work visa.”

None the less, paragraph 167 states:

“The assumption of around 10 per cent increase in enrolments is estimated to lead to an average annual increase in non-EU enrolments by around 25,000 over the first five years of the policy.”

That is a strikingly convenient conclusion in the light of the assessment of 25,000 fewer EU students at the end of the same period.

Paragraph 172 notes:

“Changes in the numbers of students enrolling will affect tuition fee income for universities. Overall, projected tuition fee income is estimated to increase under the future immigration system. This is primarily driven by the”—

assumed—

“increase in tuition fee income from additional non-EEA students which is expected to more than offset the decline in EEA student tuition fee income. The increase is estimated to be between £1 billion and £2 billion over the first five years of the policy.”

However, paragraph 172 goes on to state:

“Estimates do not take any account of behavioural impacts, nor any changes in universities expenditure.”

Paragraph 173 expands on that, stating:

“EU students are currently classified as ‘home’ students, and therefore benefit from accessing student loans and paying domestic tuition fees which are currently capped at £9,250 for undergraduates. Estimates above assume home fee status and access to student loans will remain the same as the current system. However, any changes to this will have an impact on both EU student enrolments and the projected tuition fee income of universities.”

Paragraph 175 concludes:

“As a result of changes to net student enrolments modelled above, a cumulative net fiscal benefit is estimated of under £1 billion over the first five years of the forecast period.”

That is a bold statement that will be true only if the assumptions in the impact assessment are correct and the reductions in EU students are indeed replaced by non-EU students.

We can already identify a number of policy choices that could affect those assumptions. The current situation for EEA students coming to the UK is that for academic year 2020-21, they retain the same status as domestic students. However, delays in start dates and term times as a result of the covid crisis may mean that there will be students who enrol on to academic year 2020-21, but do not enter the UK until 2021. Which immigration system will apply in such circumstances is uncertain.

--- Later in debate ---

It should be recognised that prospective students take into account many factors when choosing where they will go to study, including the quality of the institution and the course on offer, course fees, the ability to access student loans, graduate outcomes and the global economic environment. The new clause would require the MAC to consider the impact of “this Act” only. Such a narrow focus would not capture the wider environment that could affect international student numbers. For the reasons I have set out, I hope that Opposition Members will feel able withdraw the new clause.

[Kate Green]

I welcome much of what the Minister has said. I welcome his and the Government’s ambition to be and to continue to be a leading player in the international student market. I very much welcome what he said about the commitment either to continue our association with Erasmus+, if that is possible, or to find other ways to continue to offer international exchange opportunities to students. He gave useful assurances in relation to the guidance published this morning—which I apologise for not having read—on greater flexibilities in respect of the covid-19 crisis. I am sure that the MAC will have heard what the Minister said about encouraging its continued active review of the international student market. Given the Minister’s comments, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the motion.

Clause, by leave, withdrawn.

New Clause 29

Report on arrangements for temporary entry and stay for business purposes for EEA and Swiss nationals

“(1) A Minister of the Crown must, within 12 months of this Act coming into force, lay before Parliament a report evaluating the effects of this Act on the arrangements for temporary entry and stay for business purposes for EEA and Swiss nationals.

(2) That report must include—

(a) the qualification requirements for a short-term business visitor

(b) the activities that can be undertaken by a short-term business visitor;

(c) consider the reciprocal arrangements for UK nationals travelling to the EEA and Switzerland.”—(Holly Lynch.)

This new clause would require the Government to consider the requirements of short-term business visitors.

Brought up, and read the First time.

[Holly Lynch]

I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.

The new clause is not unlike some of the other proposals we have made in this sitting to ask the Government to go away and develop an evidence base, shining a spotlight on certain sectors, which we hope would then inform more concrete proposals. This proposal has a particular focus on the creative industries, temporary migration and visa requirements for working arrangements.

We understand that the Government are currently negotiating a reciprocal agreement with the EU that would allow UK citizens to undertake some paid business activities in the EU without a work permit on a short-term basis. However, the precise details, including the range of activities, the documentation needed and the time limit, are all still to be negotiated; certainly the details are still to be put into the public domain.

One sector directly affected is culture, music and the performing arts. The creative sector contributes over £100 billion a year to the UK economy and employs over 3 million people, according to the Confederation of British Industry. There are growing concerns in this sector about the lack of progress on a reciprocal agreement being reached before the end of the transition period, and whether it would guarantee short-term work and visits for EU nationals, all of which is critical for the survival of the music profession.

Britain’s music industry has long attracted world-class artists, entertainers and musicians to perform in the UK, but this is all very precarious if visa issues are not resolved by the end of the year. This is also one of the sectors hardest hit by the coronavirus, as events and performances will no doubt be one of the last elements across society to return to normal.

Working in the European Union, whether that involves performing, recording, teaching or collaborating, is an essential part of the music professional’s ability to earn. The music industry is very transient and often there is not enough work available in the UK for musicians to sustain livelihoods, but going abroad has often provided a solution. We are not talking about performers earning megabucks, although of course we want the UK to be an attractive stage for them and for our international talent in the rest of Europe—for example, UK performers who may go to work in a holiday resort for two months of the year, or may tour venues in a number of European countries.

If the UK leaves without a comprehensive arrangement in place, musicians could very quickly find themselves trying to navigate the entry requirements for each of the 27 EU member states, which risks causing major disruption to the UK’s music industry. Without effective reciprocal arrangements, the UK may see a decline in skilled culture sector workers entering the country from the EU. If the music industry is to survive and we are to continue attracting the best talent from across the world, musicians and performers must be able to continue travelling abroad to work with ease after the transition period. It is the same for many other businesses and industries.

The Home Office previously pledged that it would allow EU bands to enter the country freely for gigs post Brexit, and that it would continue to include special arrangements for creative workers. A potential solution might be a multi-entry touring visa valid for about two years and EU-wide, covering all 27 member states, which I know is the preference of the Incorporated Society of Musicians.

I hope the Minister agrees that the UK must continue to attract musicians and performers from all over the world with an immigration system that is fit for purpose. Providing the best possible situation to do that would be achieved by commissioning the report set out in new clause 29.

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

Kate Green Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee Debate: 8th sitting: House of Commons
Thursday 18th June 2020 Public Bill Committees

[Kevin Foster]

I thank my right hon. Friend for that intervention. Yes, there is always that possibility. For example, one of the reasons why we will not look to accept EEA identity cards in the long term at the border and internally for certain right-to-work checks is that some EEA identity cards are very prone to abuse, unlike secure passports. There are always going to be such claims, but certainly there is strong work going on. However, as we touched on, the core reason is that we cannot produce today a final list of who will be eligible, but we are working closely with local councils. Of course, each day children come into care, sadly, so again, snapshots do not reflect the work that needs to be done.

[Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

I do think that a running total—albeit one that would be changing from quarter to quarter—would give us a sense of the scale of the challenge, especially as we are now within six months of the end of the transition period and a year from the end of the extended period in which applications can be made. This point was raised, I think, a year ago in a debate in Westminster Hall when the Government first gave the undertaking to collect the data, and to do so through local authorities, which ought to give us a bit more confidence about its validity than if children or their families were simply providing it themselves. I say to the Minister that it would reassure Parliament if such information as is available were made public as soon as possible, although we understand that it is a bit of a moving feast.

[The Chair]

I remind hon. Members that interventions should be brief and to the point.

--- Later in debate ---

[Stuart C. McDonald]

I do not think I have denied that certain benefits are still available to people, but none of that explains or resolves all the challenges that I outlined. For all these reasons, we believe that the no recourse to public funds rule should be got rid of altogether.

That is all the more urgent in relation to the covid-19 crisis, for which the implications of these policies are absolutely counterproductive. People who are prohibited from accessing public funds will feel compelled to continue to work, even when doing so is not safe for them or their families. As I said, their inclusion in the furlough scheme is welcome, but someone who is subject to NRPF and is dismissed from their job will obviously not have access to the furlough scheme, and nor can they claim universal credit. They are at real risk of destitution.

We all watched the Prime Minister at the Liaison Committee recently. He was questioned, quite memorably, by the Chair of the Work and Pensions Committee, who provided an example to the Prime Minister of parents who had lived in the UK for at least 15 years and who had two children, aged 11 and 13. They found themselves facing destitution for reasons entirely beyond their control. It was telling that the Prime Minister could not explain why the family was not able to access support. Of course, they should be able to access support, and these new clauses would allow that to happen.

[Kate Green]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer. I rise to speak to new clause 59, tabled in my name and those of my hon. Friends. The new clause would require the Secretary of State to produce an analysis of the impact of the no recourse to public funds condition on EEA and Swiss nationals, including those with children, those with pre-settled status and those who are victims of domestic abuse.

As we heard from the hon. Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East, no recourse to public funds conditions can prevent access to some welfare benefits, to free school meals and to other support for working families who may have been paying tax. That may include families with children, including British-born children, and other vulnerable people. As we heard, application can be made to lift the condition, but it is necessary to reapply at each visa renewal, and the condition can be reinstated.

The impact of no recourse to public funds conditions on the poorest households has been magnified, as the hon. Gentleman said, by the covid crisis. The Greater Manchester Immigration Aid Unit reports that applications to lift the condition are subject to considerable delay; that the process for applying is overcomplicated, and that is exacerbated for those who struggle to make digital applications; that the evidential requirements are high and unnecessarily onerous; and, as a result, that decisions are still awaited weeks after applications have been submitted.

This makes it harder for those subject to the condition to achieve social distancing or to self-isolate if they need to. They are more likely to be living in overcrowded accommodation, with many building up rent arrears. Even though they may, as the Minister rightly says, be eligible for the Government’s furlough scheme, they are under considerable pressure to keep working in many cases. Often, their children are not in school and they cannot access free childcare, forcing them to rely on friends and family to provide that care, meaning that children are moving between households, further increasing the covid risk.

Meanwhile, Safety4Sisters tells me that local authority housing services in Greater Manchester have been turning women subject to no recourse to public funds conditions away from the emergency homeless accommodation set up during the crisis, even though that should not happen. This has resulted in at least one vulnerable woman becoming street homeless in Manchester in recent weeks, until she was found by the police and taken to safety.

Given these shocking circumstances, Labour has called for the no recourse to public funds condition to be suspended during the covid emergency. As we heard, new clause 45, proposed by the hon. Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East, would give effect to such a suspension, while ensuring that, if Parliament wishes to reinstate the regime as soon as the crisis ends, it can do so. Suspension of the condition now would not only provide vital relief to families who have had their livelihoods catastrophically affected by covid, but would give the Government the opportunity to give full consideration to the impact of the no recourse to public funds condition more broadly and to future policy.

As we know, and as we have just heard, the Prime Minister was apparently surprised to hear about the effects of the condition during his recent session with the Liaison Committee, and he was right to say that

“people who have worked hard for this country, who live and work here, should have support”.

Sadly, just a week later, on 3 June, in his response in Prime Minister’s questions to my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield), he appeared to backtrack on his commitment to see what could be done to help them.

It is, of course, welcome that the Government have now issued guidance to give effect to the judgment in the case described by the hon. Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East, but this still leaves many potentially vulnerable people at risk of being subject to the condition. That includes those EU nationals who are here now but are able to secure only pre-settled status. They will not meet the habitual residence test and will be ineligible for non-contributory benefits; that includes disabled people, who will not be able to claim universal credit. I am sure my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull North will speak to her new clause 62 and the damaging effect the condition could have on EEA and Swiss national families with children.

Given the potential impact on vulnerable groups, I hope the Minister will accept the suggestion of an analysis of the impact of the no recourse to public funds condition in the constructive spirit in which it is offered. If the Prime Minister’s commitment to review the application still holds, and if, as is reported, the Government intend to bring forward a further immigration Bill in the near future, they could take that opportunity to legislate to make any changes Parliament then deems necessary. The evidence base that such a review could supply would also be a useful prerequisite for a decision on the broader proposals set out in new clause 56 by the hon. Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East, were the Government minded to consider them. I commend our new clause to the Committee.

--- Later in debate ---

[Stuart C. McDonald]

I am grateful to the Minister for his response. I am not sure I agree with his reasoning on what the new clause would or would not allow, but I will take that away and give it further thought. In the meantime, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the motion.

Clause, by leave, withdrawn.

New Clause 60

Report on the status and social security entitlements of UK nationals in the EU member states

“(1) The Secretary of State must prepare and publish quarterly reports on the progress being made by EU member states on the migration status and social security entitlements of UK nationals in their countries.

(2) A Minister of the Crown must, not later than a month after the report has been laid before Parliament, make a motion in the House of Commons in relation to the report.”—(Kate Green.)

This new clause would require the Government to update the House of Commons on the progress being made by the EU27 countries on the implementation of protections for UK nationals in their countries on a quarterly basis.

Brought up, and read the First time.

[Kate Green]

I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.

The new clause would require the Government to report quarterly on the status and social security entitlements of UK nationals in EU member states. I am grateful to British in Europe for its comprehensive briefing in preparation for this debate.

Implementation in the EU of the citizens’ rights part of the withdrawal agreement is still in its early stages, with few countries having final or even draft legislation in place. Application processes have begun in only a handful of countries. The situation has understandably been exacerbated by delays caused by the covid crisis. However, that creates uncertainty for thousands of UK families and individuals in the EU, who are awaiting the outcome of applications to be allowed to stay in countries in which they have made their home that have opted for an application or constitutive system.

The European Commission’s promised guidance note, which was eventually published on 12 May, is helpful in clarifying some of the uncertainties, but outstanding issues include how dual UK-EU nationals and other citizens who do not rely on the withdrawal agreement for residence rights can evidence their rights; how the withdrawal agreement applies to UK citizens who are eligible for protection under the withdrawal agreement in their own right and for protection under EU law as family members of EU citizens; and whether UK citizens eligible for protection under the withdrawal agreement, which of course confers no right of free movement to third EU countries, can obtain the rights at least to some mobility enjoyed by other third-country nationals, either in addition to their withdrawal agreement rights or by waiving that protection and opting to register as non-withdrawal agreement third-country nationals.

In addition, the common format of the card evidencing withdrawal agreement rights, mandated by the Commission for UK nationals in the EU, fails to distinguish between permanent residence and ordinary residence. The conditions for lawful residence under EU law, which applies during the transition period, and under the withdrawal agreement for those who have not yet acquired permanent residence or had permanent residence confirmed, include requirements to be employed or self-employed, or economically self-sufficient with comprehensive health insurance.

Those conditions are applied strictly in many EU countries. The lockdown restrictions of the covid crisis, however, have caused people to lose their jobs or much of their income, and some will be unable to obtain comprehensive health insurance because of exclusions—students studying abroad and recent graduates are at particular risk.

We know the Government do not intend to extend the transition period. Will the Minister tell us whether the Government intend to ask EU member states to grant extensions to time limits for securing rights under the withdrawal agreement, which people have been unable to comply with because of covid restrictions on travel or the closure of administrative offices? That applies not only to residence rights across the EU, but to citizenship applications where 31 December this year is a cut-off date, such as is the case in Germany or Italy.

With much still unresolved, British in Europe and the3million have suggested that they should attend the specialised committee on citizens’ rights of the joint committee on implementation of the withdrawal agreement established—

[The Chair]

Order. The new clause is about the Government reporting to the House of Commons. I understand the points that the hon. Lady is making, but if she would relate her comments to the reporting, I would be grateful.

[Kate Green]

Of course, Mr Stringer; that is very helpful guidance. These are matters on which I hope the Minister may be able to give some immediate answers about the Government’s current actions, but obviously the report to the House would be able to demonstrate the effect on UK nationals in the EU of our withdrawal from the European Union, which I think the public as a whole will be concerned about. As I go through further remarks about possible effects, I will naturally seek to come back to the point that I seek the approval of the Committee on regular reports on these matters being made to the House, including on the suggestion by British in Europe and the3million that they should be able to attend the specialist committee on citizens’ rights of the Withdrawal Agreement Joint Committee.

There are other uncertainties for UK nationals who are not covered by the withdrawal agreement. Jeremy Morgan of British in Europe agreed in our oral evidence session last week that UK nationals resident in the UK but who own second properties in the European Union will potentially now be caught by the 90 out of 180 days rule under the Schengen arrangements. It is not clear whether the UK Government have given up on negotiating up to 180-day stays for UK citizens visiting the European Union, so it would be useful to have regular reports to the House on whether negotiations are continuing, or on the impact if they are not.

The concerns I have outlined so far affect UK nationals who already live, work or own property in the European Union, but there will also be concerns about UK nationals moving to the EU in the future after the end of the transition period. In our evidence session on 9 June, Jeremy Morgan of British in Europe drew attention to whether UK nationals will be able to buy property in certain EU countries after the transition, which again I think would be of interest to the House and the wider public, and future reports on that would be welcome.

On Tuesday, we debated the implications of clause 5 and the draft social security arrangements published by the UK and the EU. I am grateful to the Minister for the letter he sent me late yesterday evening, which I think has been copied to all Committee members, in response to a number of issues I raised in that debate. The analogy drawn in the letter with other treaties between the UK and third countries simply exposes the more limited protection that those treaties provide, and that such treaties seem to be the model for our future arrangements with the European Union—for example, on aggregating contributions, sharing information or healthcare. If those are to be a model for future coverage for UK nationals in the EU, again I think that is something that should be drawn regularly to the attention of the House.

The draft social security agreement attached to the free trade agreement published in February makes it clear that the Government envisage that short-term visitors would be covered, but what of those who go to work or make their home in the EU in future? The Minister’s letter says that contributory employment and support allowance will be available for four weeks. I note in passing that a decreasing number of people get contributory ESA anyway, and that that four-week grace period will be of no use to disabled people moving abroad, or even visiting for five, six or seven weeks. I think the House would like to be aware of the implications of new arrangements for disabled people.

Similarly, on healthcare, the Minister’s letter may try to gloss over this, but for those who are not going to be covered by the withdrawal agreement, the S2 will be scrapped, so they cannot in future go abroad and have treatment paid for in the EU, even if the NHS cannot provide that treatment. Importantly, we will lose the mutual recognition of prescriptions, which could have quite significant consequences for some UK nationals.

My assessment is that, for those UK nationals moving to the European Union after the transition, the unspoken thrust of the letter sent by the Minister last night is a levelling down of protections and rights, which I feel the House should want to track on a regular basis. I recognise that a number of bilateral reciprocal arrangements—some going back many years—between the UK and certain member states may fill in some of the gaps in social security co-ordination arrangements in the future, but it is unclear whether either country will regard them as remaining effective. In any event, many of the arrangements offer only very limited protection. Again, I think it would be useful for the House to be updated on the standing of, and application of, these bilateral agreements.

If no agreement is secured with the European Union and the Minister hopes that instead a series of new bilateral arrangements might be negotiated between the UK and each individual member state, there may be a fear in those member states that that could impinge on the co-ordination arrangements that apply in relation to other member states, and that fall within the scope of European Union co-ordination regulations. It would be useful for the House to have regular updates on that.

The picture that I have painted suggests at best confusion, and at worst the prospect of less favourable protections for UK citizens in the European Union—those already there, and those who move to European Union countries in future. The UK Government have an obligation to look after the welfare of their citizens wherever they are located. Quarterly reporting to Parliament will make it possible to conduct scrutiny of the way in which the Government meet the obligation.

[Kevin Foster]

I thank the hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston for moving new clause 60, which is well intentioned but ultimately unnecessary. The Government are monitoring closely the implementation of the withdrawal agreement for UK nationals in the EU and information on citizens’ rights in each EU member state is already provided by the Government on our “Living in” guides on gov.uk.

Having ratified the withdrawal agreement and legislated for it domestically in the EU (Withdrawal Agreement) Act 2020 in January, the Government are now closely monitoring the progress of member state implementation during the transition period, via our network of embassies, high commissions and consulates across Europe. We are committed to providing UK nationals overseas with clear and appropriate information and are working with member states to ensure that any introduction of, or changes to, administrative procedures that are in line with the withdrawal agreement will be communicated to resident UK nationals.

The EU’s social security co-ordination rules will continue to apply in full to individuals in full scope of the withdrawal agreement, including UK nationals living and/or working in the EU, and EEA citizens living and/or working in the UK by the end of the transition period. Those rights are protected for as long as they remain in full scope of the withdrawal agreement.

Information is available via our “Living in” guides on gov.uk, and UK nationals should sign up for the latest information on the actions they need to take. The “Living in Europe” guide, which is also on gov.uk, provides further information on citizens’ rights to UK nationals in the EU.

Beyond that, we also have a governance structure established by the withdrawal agreement to monitor the correct implementation and application of the withdrawal agreement. The Withdrawal Agreement Joint Committee, chaired by my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, has already met twice, on 30 March and 12 June.

The Specialised Committee on Citizens’ Rights, co-chaired by UK and EU officials, met on 20 May. As set out in the joint statement following the meeting, both the UK and the EU exchanged updates on the implementation of the citizens’ rights part of the withdrawal agreement and discussed preparatory work for future meetings. The Government and European Commission share the objective of ensuring the correct and timely implementation of the withdrawal agreement to provide certainty to UK nationals in the EU and EU citizens in the UK. The Committee will therefore meet regularly during the transition period and thereafter.

Finally, I reassure the Committee that we are calling on the European Commission and all member states to ensure timely implementation and clear communications to UK nationals in the EU, in line with what has been agreed in the withdrawal agreement.

I will briefly cover some of the points that the hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston made. The Government are continuing their negotiations with a view to a future partnership. We have already looked to extend our generous visitor visa provisions to EEA nationals from 1 January, on the same basis as we have to many of our traditional international friends and allies, such as Canada, the United States and Japan. We continue in discussions to seek a productive partnership. However, I am sure that the hon. Lady will appreciate that it is not possible for us, in domestic UK immigration measures, to legislate for what other nations should offer the United Kingdom.

On that basis, I ask the hon. Lady to withdraw her new clause.

[Kate Green]

I feel that the Minister’s response has rather missed some of the points that I was trying to make. In seeking a report to Parliament, I am asking for something a little bit different from information to UK nationals about what they should be doing at any given time, whether or not they moved to the EU before or after the end of transition. Intergovernmental discussions—or discussions between the UK Government and the European Union—taking place in the joint committee are very important, but they are not a parliamentary event that ensures full public information and scrutiny of those discussions. My point on the bilateral treaties was also about thinking of protections for UK nationals, which, if I may say so, are in the gift of the UK Government. The signs are worrying when looking at the Government’s draft agreement, published earlier this year.

I will not press the new clause to a vote, but I gently suggest to the Minister that keeping the House updated on such matters is not only important to hon. Members, but of considerable importance to our constituents. We have found at times that Ministers are quite tardy in coming to the House to inform us about the progress of negotiations with the European Union, at least in relation to these important matters. I hope that the Minister will use his good offices to encourage his colleagues to keep us as well informed as possible. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the motion.

New clause, by leave, withdrawn.

Question proposed, That the Chair do report the Bill to the House.

[Kevin Foster]

On a point of order, Mr Stringer. I thought it appropriate to thank you and Sir Edward for your very effective chairmanships and for keeping us all in order—even me, with the interesting slip that I managed to make earlier today. I hope that it did not cause too much hilarity in the Committee.