EU Settlement Scheme

Nick Thomas-Symonds Excerpts

Tuesday 29th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Kevin Foster]

I thank my hon. Friend for his question. I shall start with his last point first. We are working hard with local authorities. The figure I gave was from the end of April. We are now coming to the end of June, and we know that a significant number of applications have been lodged in support of children in care. I have often given this example, but if, for the sake of argument, a child in care aged five today discovers in 13 years’ time, when they become an adult, that their application had not been made on their behalf—when, for example, they get their first job—we will consider that reasonable grounds for a late application.

In terms of the schemes in Europe, we encourage EU member states to look at the progress we have made in the UK with the EUSS and at how their systems could replicate it by being free and relatively simple, with plenty of support available. Similarly, we encourage all UK nationals in the EU to check their status and ensure that they submit their application in in good time.

[Nick Thomas-Symonds (Torfaen) (Lab)]

I welcome the Minister back to the Dispatch Box.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield) on securing this urgent question. There could not be a more powerful warning to the Government of what happens when innocent people are deprived of their right to be here than the Windrush scandal. Twenty-eight-day warnings advising people to apply for settled status have been issued, despite an estimated 400,000 applications still awaiting processing. As my hon. Friend said, leaked documents suggest that 130,000 people in receipt of benefits have yet to sign up, and that support could be taken away. The Children’s Society has estimated that applications have not been made for more than 2,000 children in care or care leavers. That is why the Opposition have called for an extension of the European Union settlement scheme to the end of September. The Government must then do everything possible to sign up eligible people, with a strategy focusing on the vulnerable, children in care and care leavers.

Will the Minister confirm what is being done to support those who are unable to use or access the internet? More widely, how many eligible individuals does the Home Office believe have yet to sign up, and precisely how many applications are still being processed? Put simply, the Government have not done enough to prevent people from falling through the cracks. To avoid the risk of terrible injustice, surely the Government must extend the deadline to the end of September and use the additional time to ensure that all who are eligible are signed up.

[Kevin Foster]

What I would say is that the EUSS itself is the lesson learned from Windrush. Granting people status via an Act of Parliament, with no record taken and no document to prove it, might work for a few years while people can still easily prove where they were living on a particular date, but many years down the line it produces the outcomes we saw. That is exactly why we have been keen to make the EUSS relatively simple and open, with criteria that are basically based on residence, not on exercising specific free movement rights, which would have been far more restrictive and complicated for applicants to prove.

Intensive work is being done to support the most vulnerable, with 72 grant-funded organisations being funded up to the end of September to continue supporting applications and those with status beyond the deadline tomorrow. Again, we have been working closely with local authorities to reach out to those in care—not just children in care, but adults as well.

Literally millions of applications have been received, although it is hard to give a precise figure for how many applications are currently outstanding, given that literally thousands are still coming in every day—and we very much welcome that. To reassure the House, we have dealt with much larger surges of applications. For example, around Christmas, we were receiving literally tens of thousands of applications. Also to reassure the House, the vast majority of those have already been resolved, with all but a small percentage having been granted status under the EUSS.

We believe that we have made great progress, but, as we have touched on before, we have published non-exhaustive guidance on what we will see as reasonable grounds for a late application, including for many vulnerable groups. We have also published guidance for employers—and landlords—on what their approach should be to an EEA national they had employed before the deadline and how the first resort should be to look at supporting them in making an application.

The hon. Gentleman said that 28-day warnings have been issued. To be clear, those have not been issued. We have not got to the deadline; what he was referring to is the approach we will take when we encounter people who may be eligible for EUSS status after the deadline.