EU/British Citizens’ Rights

Peter Grant Excerpts

Tuesday 18th June 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr Walker]

I fully appreciate my hon. Friend’s point. The Secretary of State’s letter to Mr Barnier has gone, and there is a copy in the Library, but this is something we should reiterate to our European counterparts at every opportunity. We have all said this, and the EU has said, I trust in good faith, that it wants to put citizens at the forefront of negotiations. We have an opportunity to do so, and we should continue to remind people that it is about individuals living in all our constituencies. We really value them, and we want to provide them with the greatest possible reassurance.

[Peter Grant (Glenrothes) (SNP)]

I commend the hon. Member for South Leicestershire (Alberto Costa) not only for securing this urgent question but for his tireless efforts on behalf of EU nationals in the UK and of UK nationals overseas. I welcome the assurances in the Secretary of State’s letter, but two big questions still remain. First, why has it taken so long to get not very far? Three years since the referendum, the UK Government have still failed to give the assurances that the Scottish Government were prepared to give the day after the referendum if only they had the powers to do so. I welcome the assurances from the Government, but those assurances ring hollow when we remember the shameful complacency this Government showed two weeks ago when they completely washed their hands of the fact that thousands of these same citizens were denied the basic right to vote in European elections. Why do the Government still insist on a settled status scheme based on, “You apply and we might say no”? And they do say no; far too often, and for no valid reason, they turn down applications from my constituents and others. Why do the Government not go for the scheme the Scottish Government have suggested, which is simply an approach of, “This is your home, thank you for being here, please stay”? Why can we not have a system that recognises residency here as a matter of right, not as a privilege at the whim of the Home Office?

The Secretary of State’s letter said that devolved Administrations support his approach. The letter he referred to from Mike Russell finished with the words that EU citizens

“are our friends, our colleagues and our family and they deserve to stay in the place they have chosen to call home without the insecurity that Brexit has created.”

If the Government agree with that, why do they not get rid of the insecurity right now, and guarantee unconditionally and permanently the rights of all 3 million EU nationals who currently call these islands their home?

[Mr Walker]

I recognise the hon. Gentleman’s passion to ensure that those rights are guaranteed. If he looks at what we have done in terms of the negotiated agreement and the no-deal paper on citizens’ rights as to what will be done, he will see that that is exactly the guarantee that we are providing. He asked an important question about the nature of the settled status scheme and why we feel it needs to constitutive rather than declaratory. With the best will in the world, a purely declaratory scheme risks causing confusion and difficulty for people further down the line. We saw that with Windrush. We want to ensure that people have a simple way of proving their rights under this agreement and we think a constitutive system is a better way to achieve that. We are continuing to work on this with EU citizens’ groups up and down the country, including in Scotland, to make sure that they have all the information they need to secure that. He says that applications have been refused. There are some applications where people are being asked for more evidence or more detail, but there are no applications that have been refused.