Citizens’ Rights (European Affairs Committee Report)

Lord Hannay of Chiswick Excerpts

Monday 11th September 2023 Grand Committee

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick (CB)]

My Lords, much water has flowed under many bridges since the report we are debating today was published some two and a half years ago. Some developments in the treaty-based handling of citizens’ rights on both sides of the channel following Brexit are, frankly, worthy of respect—particularly the granting of settled and pre-settled status to several more millions of EU citizens in this country than was originally anticipated. I would add in my praiseworthy list the work of my noble friend Lord Kinnoull and the noble Lord, Lord Wood, who did the refresh of our report.

Other events are, I fear, a bit less praiseworthy and I will come to those shortly, but we must not lose sight of the basics of the affair: in June 2016, the referendum vote—I am not contesting the outcome’s legitimacy—deprived millions of citizens on both sides of the channel of their existing citizens’ rights, without their having any say in the matter. That was a shameful way of proceeding—all the more so when the governing party promised in its 2015 election manifesto to give the vote to all UK citizens resident abroad and then failed to do so in time for them to exercise that vote on an occasion of such importance to them as the 2016 referendum.

As my noble friend Lord Kinnoull mentioned, your Lordships’ European Affairs Committee has urged the Government again and again to rectify their scheme for granting settled and pre-settled status to provide the option to recipients of receiving a hard copy registering their status—the sort of thing we all had the option to receive under the Covid-19 vaccination scheme—but again and again the Government have refused to do that, most recently in the Home Secretary’s much-belated reply to the committee’s letter of May this year. They plead security concerns of a rather unconvincing and unsubstantiated kind. I really hope the Minister will indicate today a willingness to look again at this matter and to cease ignoring the considerable body of evidence that many elderly and insecure EU citizens have expressed troubling anxieties as a result of not having paper or plastic evidence of their status. To refuse this is sheer digital fundamentalism. Of course, our own citizens in the rest of Europe have no such problem because they all get identity cards.

Then there was the lamentable attempt by the Government to subject late applications for pre-selected status to an arbitrary and subjective ruling on their acceptability. This scheme was struck down in a case lodged by the IMA as illegal—incompatible with the provisions of the withdrawal agreement with the EU which we had entered into and ratified. It is good that the Government accepted that ruling and did not appeal, but it has taken far too long to produce an alternative way of handling late applications—until just before the recent Summer Recess.

It remains to be seen whether these alternative arrangements are regarded as questionable by the IMA. I would, in any case, be grateful if the Minister could confirm that the new arrangements announced on 17 July, in so far as they apply to the handling of late applicants, will in no respect lead to arbitrary, unilateral or subjective rulings of the sort that were considered by the High Court to be incompatible with our withdrawal agreement. I hope the Minister will commit to handling any problems with greater flexibility than was displayed the last time, and will avoid any further recourse to the courts, which will result only in stress and anxiety for the individuals concerned and bad blood with our European partners. Meanwhile, the European Affairs Committee will itself be considering carefully the terms of the Home Secretary’s remarkably belated reply of late July to our earlier letter. That could lead to further correspondence.

Why does all this matter? Citizens’ rights and the way we handle them are at the heart of the issues of trust and confidence between the two parties to the withdrawal agreement, the UK and the EU, which have been so lamentably deficient in recent years, to the detriment of both parties. We shall be debating in the Chamber on 20 September the best way to restore that trust and confidence and to build a more fruitful and solid post-Brexit relationship. Citizens’ rights and our willingness to stick rigorously to what we signed up to will be an integral part of any such venture.