Draft Citizens' Rights (Restrictions of Rights of Entry and Residence) (EU Exit) Regulations 2020 Draft Citizens' Rights (Application Deadline and Temporary Protection) (EU Exit) Regulations 2020 Draft Citizens' Rights (Frontier Workers) (EU Exit) Regulations 2020

Patrick Grady Excerpts

Wednesday 14th October 2020 General Committees

[Patrick Grady (Glasgow North) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Fovargue. I remember our days on the Select Committee on Procedure together; look how far we have both come. I think this is the first time I have served on a Committee since the lockdown restrictions and social distancing came in, so I want to pay tribute to the Clerks and everyone else who is responsible for making Committees operate so safely. In other circumstances, my hon. Friend the Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East (Stuart C. McDonald) would be here, but virtual provision is not yet a reality for these Committees, so I am stepping in. Again, thanks to the Clerks for allowing us to shuffle things around.

I will mostly focus on the grace period regulation, as well as the rights of entry that the hon. Member for Enfield, Southgate, the spokesperson for Labour, has mentioned. We also have this issue with physical documentation: I have constituents who get the email saying, “Thank you for applying for your settled status, which you have now achieved. This email is not proof of your settled status.” This is no use. They need to know for certain that they have the right to be here, under the regulations that are put in place.

The question of the grace period in the second SI is particularly important. We have consistently argued against cut-off dates, full stop. The risk throughout all this is that we create a new Windrush generation. The reasonable excuses that the Minister is having to put in are exactly the kind of difficulties that people of the Windrush generation are encountering right now—look at the hassle that that has caused. That could be avoided if the Government were more open and more generous with what they are proposing.

The six months’ grace period is the shortest and tightest allowed by the withdrawal agreement. The Government should be reaching out more. Even the expression a “grace period” is difficult—“Oh yes, thank you. Thank for this grace period.” We are being so gracious! These people are the vital workers who are helping us get through the pandemic. As we all know, if EU citizens were no longer resident in the United Kingdom, the health service would collapse, even without the damage that the pandemic is doing to it. The Government have to do a better job, on top of what the Minister is announcing, on targeting hard-to-reach EEA citizens and giving them as much time as they need to respond and get their paperwork sorted.

The technical points that Labour touched on are quite important. We accept that the Government are in fact allowing the grace period for everyone who is resident in accordance with the free movement regulations —sorry, it is wider than that; it is simply residents, not just those resident in accordance with the free movement regulations. The risk is of people falling through the gaps, because perhaps they do not have the comprehensive sickness insurance and so on. There is no good reason that the Government could not just tweak the scope of the regulations to include everyone within the scope of the settled status scheme. That would cost the Government nothing and it would avoid exactly the kind of unintended consequences that everybody seems to recognise are a possibility as a result of the regulation, not least in accessing different kinds of service and different kinds of housing.

Rather than a list of reasonable excuses, why not just tweak the regulations and make them as wide and encompassing as they can be? That would hopefully avoid exactly the kind of difficulties the Minister is suggesting five, 10 or 15 years down the line, as people unwittingly start to realise the problems that have been caused.

We seek reassurances from the Government, but we also join the official Opposition in opposing that regulation.