Oral Answers to Questions

Stuart C McDonald Excerpts

Wednesday 20th January 2021 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend is a great advocate for his constituents in Colne Valley, and I much enjoy my exchanges with him. I thank him for what he says about those groups. We must rely on what the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation has to say and the priorities that the experts have decided, but of course we want to see those groups that he mentions vaccinated as soon as possible. I am very pleased that in spite of all the difficulties in supply, last week we gave 1.5 million people their first dose, up half a million on the week before.

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

  When we praise our social care workers for their immense response to the pandemic, that includes more than 100,000 care workers from the EU. New research from the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants shows that many of them do not know anything about the Prime Minister’s EU settlement scheme, and many more do not know that they must apply by the end of June. We could see thousands of essential care workers and possibly hundreds of thousands of valued EU nationals losing their rights to live and work here overnight on 1 July. Will the Prime Minister please cancel or postpone the application deadline or, better still, extend the rights of EU nationals in the UK automatically, just as he previously promised to do?