European Council

Lord Oates Excerpts

Monday 26th June 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

Over the past year, since the referendum result, the Government have engaged extremely widely with a range of representatives from groups and organisations to feed into our thinking. For instance, DExEU has conducted analysis of more than 50 sectors of the economy, covering financial services, retail, agriculture, energy, infrastructure and transport. In your Lordships’ House we have had a lot of debate, and the Select Committees have published very useful reports to help feed into that thinking. We have put in place a solid foundation for further discussions, admittedly under an ambitious timetable. The UK and EU teams will meet every four weeks, coming together for a number of days at a time to progress discussions as quickly and effectively as possible. We have now started the negotiations and therefore hope that we will see progress, which we have not seen over the past year because we had not triggered Article 50.

[Lord Oates (LD)]

My Lords, although I regret that this announcement did not come earlier and is not unilateral, I none the less welcome that the Government have at least made some progress. However, there is discussion in the document about the fees for the new scheme being set at reasonable levels. Given that the current fee for settled status is almost £2,000, and given that the change of status for EU citizens has come about through no fault of their own but by a decision from which we are excluded, does the Minister think it right that the Government should carry this out with no fee whatever to EU citizens?

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

I can certainly assure the noble Lord that fees and charges are being looked at as part of the negotiations. I can only repeat that our aim is to offer a streamlined and high-quality service for everyone and to keep fees at a reasonable level.