EU Settled Status Scheme

Stuart C McDonald Excerpts

Tuesday 27th November 2018 Westminster Hall

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

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. I, too, congratulate the hon. Member for Boston and Skegness (Matt Warman) on securing this debate.

My party and I obviously very much regret the need for a settled status scheme at all but, for so long as we are heading down that road, we all have an interest in ensuring that it works as well as it possibly can for the sake of all those caught up in it. I congratulate hon. Members who have raised a number of concerns and issues that still require resolution or clarification, while also commending the scheme’s positive features. I acknowledge that a lot of hard work has gone into the scheme so far, but my hon. Friend the Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey (Drew Hendry) reflected the overriding and pervading sense still of worry. As an Opposition MP, I will focus on that side of things, rather than on the more positive aspects highlighted by the hon. Member for Boston and Skegness.

First, there is the issue of who qualifies for settled status. The Government did a lot of work to build trust, but every now and again they seem to shoot themselves in the foot. The latest problem has been a discrepancy between what is committed to in the statement of intent and what is delivered by the immigration rules. The intent was clear—that all EU citizens bar serious criminals would be allowed status, and only proof of identity and residence and a criminality check were to be required. However, the immigration rules reserve for the Home Office the right to refuse all who are subject to removal for not exercising treaty rights. That comes across as a breach of trust, which should be remedied. This is not a hypothetical matter—29% of permanent residence applications are refused for non-exercise of treaty rights, so hundreds of thousands of people, if not a million, may be caught by that.

I came here from another interesting meeting of the Home Affairs Committee, at which the permanent secretary and the Home Secretary again went out of their way to reassure us that their intention is simply to stick to the statement of intent, and that all that will be required is ID, residence and a criminality check. I put to the Minister what I put to them: why not ensure that the immigration rules reflect what is in the statement of intent and remove this ambiguity and dubiety altogether?

I have not yet established whether certain classes of people will qualify. I have raised some of these issues before, but I am still not clear whether a number of carers will qualify for settled status, including Zambrano, Teixeira, Chen and Ibrahim carers. I raised that at the Home Affairs Committee and was promised a letter, which never arrived, so it would be useful if the Minister clarified that. The number of people involved is very small, but the consequences are just as important for them as for everybody else.

I turn now to cost. My party has long called for the scheme to be free. I do not expect the Minister to announce that that will happen. We welcome the waivers and reductions that have been introduced, but we continue to call for the Government to go further. The hon. Member for Boston and Skegness mentioned some vulnerable citizens for whom it would definitely be appropriate to seek a waiver. After all, we are requiring these people to apply to remain in their own homes and jobs. Charging them for the privilege seems to me to be rubbing salt in the wound. Although £65 does not seem a massive amount, we are talking about a family of five having to pay £230. On top of that, at least 100,000 people will have to apply for renewed passports and so on, and there may be other costs related to the scheme. When all those expenses are taken into account, the cost could add up.

[Drew Hendry]

My hon. Friend mentioned the £65 charge for applications, but there is a £32.50 fee for children. Does he find that unpalatable?

[Stuart C. McDonald]

That is a fair point. I reiterate that our party believes the scheme should be free of charge altogether.

My hon. Friend mentioned the Scottish Government, but there are other employers who want to support their EU employees by paying the fee for them. For example, this morning I met the University of Cambridge, which is among those employers who want to pay for EU employees to achieve settled status. Actually, it will go further and apply for family members, too, so hats off to it. I understand there may be a technical issue with that, but I think employers want to be able to pay the fee as their employees make the application rather than having to reimburse them after the event. I do not know whether that is possible, but it would be useful if the Minister commented on that.

There is a concern that if employers reimburse their employees, they will be charged tax by the Treasury. Obviously, that would be awful from all sorts of perspectives. It will cost the University of Cambridge around £1 million to reimburse its EU national employees. For the Treasury to tax that would be wrong in principle, and it would not be good for the Government to be seen to be taxing settled status applications funded by employers. It may also discourage other employers from doing the same. I think the Home Office is keen for as many employers as possible to support their employees through the scheme, so it would be useful to hear what the Minister has to say about that. Again, I raised it with the Home Secretary a few moments ago in the Select Committee. He said he would be willing to raise it with the Treasury, and it would be good if the Minister was on side with that, too.

On evidence and advice, I have absolutely no reason to doubt that this process should prove simple in straightforward cases. However, like the hon. Member for Bath (Wera Hobhouse), I am worried about cases that are not simple, such as those involving elderly EU citizens who achieved permanent residence many years ago but are long retired and lack documentation. Why exclude any sort of evidence—evidence of family, friends and other sources, for example—from consideration? Why not allow caseworkers to look at all the evidence in the round in cases where the Home Office’s preferred type of evidence is not submitted?

Some people will have very difficult decisions to make. For example, they may be offered pre-settled status by the Home Office and have the choice of either challenging that and continuing to look for settled status or just going with what the Home Office offers them. Advice will be very important. Although the practical advice offered by the Home Office is helpful, I absolutely agree with the hon. Lady and my hon. Friend the Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey that there should be provision for independent legal advice via legal aid for those who need it but cannot afford it. That will be available in Scotland as normal through the advice and assistance process, but it should be available to all throughout the UK.

More generally, we need a concerted and ongoing outreach scheme to ensure that everyone who needs to apply applies. The hon. Member for Boston and Skegness mentioned the £9 million that has been spent so far, but I am dearly worried that that will not be enough. I recently read an alarming paper from the British Medical Association, which suggested that 37% of EU doctors were blissfully unaware of the Government’s settled status scheme. Imagine what that figure is among people who are not brilliant at English, elderly or vulnerable people, and people who never use the internet. There will be many who simply do not think they need to apply, including children who think they are British because they were born here but are not.

That leads us to what is probably the pivotal question: what happens to those who fail to register by the cut-off date? That includes both those who do not apply at all during the initial period and vulnerable people who get pre-settled status but fail to apply during the subsequent five years. Again, that will include children and other vulnerable people, such as trafficking victims. I asked in the Select Committee why we need a cut-off date at all. Surely, the end of the implementation period provides all the motivation we need to encourage people to apply. If even 2% or 3% fail to make it—for most Home Office schemes, we would be lucky to get 80% to 90% of people applying—tens or hundreds of thousands of people who should have applied will not have done so. Those people will face all the same consequences the Windrush generation faced, but the numbers involved absolutely dwarf that horrible episode. There is no need for a cut-off point. People should continue to be able to apply afterwards.

There are significant concerns about those who obtain status not being provided with a proper document. The hon. Member for Boston and Skegness talked up the positives of the digital document, but there is another side to that. These people, too, fear the hostile environment. The Residential Landlords Association, the3million, the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants and the Exiting the European Union Committee have all warned that if a landlord is approached about a property by one person with a British passport and another with a bit of digital code that requires further investigation, the person with the British passport will get the property. We are already seeing that sort of discrimination, and the big fear is that EU nationals with a bit of code will get it 10 times worse.

Finally, we have the issue of enforcing the deal on citizens’ rights. We need to know what form the independent monitoring authority will take. Obviously, it should be independent of the Government. When will it be established? Is there any prospect of that happening prior to the end of the implementation period, given that most applications will be made during that time?

There are many other things I could mention, and lots of issues will continue to arise. My final ask of the Minister is simply that she makes a statement to Parliament early in the new year to update us—and, most importantly, our constituents—about the progress that has been made so we can continue to push and raise concerns on behalf of EU nationals.

--- Later in debate ---

[Stuart C. McDonald]

The Minister has made a lot of helpful comments in response to some of our questions. Two remain, but I do not know if she can answer them today. First, will she simply clarify why there is a discrepancy between the statement of intent and the immigration rules in relation to the non-exercise of EU rights being a ground for refusal? Secondly, will she revisit why we have to have this severe cut-off point? What will happen to people who do not apply in time before the end of the scheme?

[Caroline Nokes]

We have indicated that there will be a proportionate approach to those who do not apply in time, which I am very conscious could be for very good reason, such as ill health. It is important that we do not penalise people who have every right to be here. We are determined to be as welcoming as possible. We are working to make sure that we articulate that properly, not only through our communications but through the immigration rules.

I thank hon. Members for their contributions. I reassure hon. Members that at no point throughout this process have we underestimated the challenge of granting immigration status to more than 3 million people. However, we have made a strong start, and we have everything in place to make this whole process a success.