Leaving the EU: Rights of EU Citizens

Matt Warman Excerpts

Monday 5th November 2018 Commons Chamber

[Caroline Nokes]

I would like to reassure the hon. Gentleman that we are working hard to ensure that there is a deal, but he raises an important point, which I think I have addressed a couple of times already. This country has made an offer to EU citizens and we have made it very clear that we want them to stay, but the same cannot be said of some of our European counterparts. This matter is pressed with Ministers at every available opportunity, and indeed with ambassadors and the EU, because it is important that British citizens living in the EU27, the majority of whom are in France and Spain, are afforded the protections to which we believe they are entitled under the withdrawal agreement.

[Matt Warman (Boston and Skegness) (Con)]

About a third of my constituents came from eastern Europe over the past 10 to 15 years. They should take heart from the settled status scheme, but they deserve clarity as soon as possible and they often look to their own embassies rather than to the UK state. Will the Minister work with those embassies to get information to these people as quickly as possible from those sources and, crucially, in their own languages?

[Caroline Nokes]

My hon. Friend raises an important point. I have already met a number of ambassadors, particularly those from central and eastern European countries, impressing upon them the importance of communicating with the diaspora populations—and they do that. As I have travelled the country over the past few months and talked to EU citizens, particularly those employed in agriculture, I have been interested to find that many of them have already received communications on this subject and that they are very confident about how they should go through the settled status process.