Draft Immigration (Provision of Physical Data) (Amendment) (EU Exit) Regulations 2018

Stuart C McDonald Excerpts

Monday 16th July 2018 General Committees

[Stuart C. McDonald (Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Christopher. I can be very brief, because I share most of the concerns that the shadow Minister has expressed.

I will briefly focus on the scope of the instrument. As long ago as September 2017, there were Home Office assurances that EU citizens would not be fingerprinted after Brexit. In the light of those assurance, the 3 million subsequently issued a statement—with the Home Office’s agreement, as I understand it—that said:

“The Home Office has confirmed in accordance with the Policy Paper (of 26th June 2017) and subsequent negotiations with the Commission on Citizens’ Rights its position that EU citizens…will not have to submit fingerprints”.

The Government then repeated those reassurances in their technical note “Citizens’ rights—administrative procedures in the UK”, published on 8 November 2017. Paragraph 12 said:

“We will verify identity and are considering digital ways to do this in order to make it both secure and user-friendly. We intend to ask applicants to submit a photograph. We will not ask EU citizens for other biometric data such as fingerprints.”

My simple question is: why is the Home Office seeking to help itself to a broader power to do something that it has previously said expressly that it would not do? Are we not in danger of undermining reassurances that have been given to EU citizens, and drawing back on them?

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[Caroline Nokes]

The hon. Gentleman makes an important point about those Commonwealth citizens who have been affected by issues related to Windrush. The key issue for the Windrush generation is that they did not have documentation to evidence their legal immigration status, which is why it is so crucial that EU citizens and their family members apply under this scheme, so that they will be able to evidence their status in future.

We have engaged comprehensively with stakeholders throughout the process.

[Stuart C. McDonald]

On the issue of engagement, as I said earlier, the Home Office has repeatedly said that it will not require fingerprints from EU nationals, but these regulations appear to allow for that to happen. Can the Minister clarify that?

[Caroline Nokes]

For absolute clarity, the regulations allow for the collection of fingerprints from the non-EU family members of EU citizens. We will not collect fingerprints from EU citizens.

We have engaged with EU citizens at every stage of the development process, and will continue to do so. We recently set up a user group specifically for vulnerable users, which has enabled us to draw on important and useful information from organisations such as Age UK. We will continue to expand our communications to ensure that EU citizens are aware of the scheme, how it will operate and what information they will need to provide, and that they are reassured that they will have plenty of time to apply for their new UK immigration status.

The issue of fees was raised. That matter was comprehensively examined last week in front of the Exiting the European Union Committee. It is clear that the fee was agreed with the EU when we were conducting the citizens’ rights part of the withdrawal negotiations and, with a process that will take three years to complete, I absolutely expect that the average family will be able to save up the amount required.