European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Bill
Debate between Stuart C McDonald and Philippa WhitfordTuesday 7th January 2020
(4 years, 10 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Committee of the whole House Amendments as at 7 January 2020 - (7 Jan 2020)
Stuart C. McDonald
If those colleagues are waiting for a vote on the previous group, it may be useful to tell them that that vote is not happening, but if they are interested in free movement rights, they are welcome to stay.
As I was saying, free movement rights have been brought to a crashing halt by part 2 of the withdrawal agreement, and that is what this part of the Bill seeks to implement. It is not just UK citizens who will no longer be able to benefit from free movement, but those here at home who will have less opportunity to meet, work alongside or form families with European colleagues or to benefit from the skills and expertise they bring as workers in our public services or the wider economy.
In Scotland, we face the very real prospect of a stagnating or declining population, so any legislation implementing that agreement would be horrible, but this legislation is even worse than it needs to be because where the withdrawal agreement gives the Government a choice, they have made the wrong choice. Instead of making life just a little bit easier for EU nationals going through a torrid time, the Government are making it more miserable. In doing so, they have broken explicit promises made by the Prime Minister, the Home Secretary and the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster during the Brexit referendum.
Our amendments seek to remedy the awful choices that the Government have made—namely, the choice to demand that citizens apply to stay; the choice that they have made to fail to provide a physical document as proof of status; and the choice that the Government have made about how the new Independent Monitoring Authority should be constituted. Our new clause 18 seeks to make life a little better for EU nationals by ensuring that those who are entitled to British citizenship can access that entitlement, regardless of their ability to pay exorbitant Home Office fees.
I turn first to amendments 5 and 6. Article 18 of the withdrawal agreement gave the Government a choice. They could either do what the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary promised and declare in law the rights of EU citizens automatically—a so-called declaratory system or registration system. Alternatively, they could make EU citizens apply to stay in their own UK homes, changing the rules after those citizens had put down roots here and pulling the rug from under their feet. There is no reasonable explanation why the Government chose the latter. The difference between a declaratory or registration system and an apply-to-stay scheme might not sound like much to those who are new to the issue, but the implications are absolutely momentous in terms of the potential disaster that individuals will face and of the number of people who face such a disaster.
By way of a hypothetical example, let us imagine a retired French lady and a young Polish guy. The French lady has been here since the 1970s and had a permanent residence document under the old EU rules. Understandably, she thought she did not need to apply to stay, but it turns out that, of course, she did. The Polish guy was born here and because of that he believed that he was British, so he did not apply. However, it turns out that because his Polish mum and his UK father were not married at the time of his birth, he was not British after all, and he should have applied as well. Under the Government’s proposals, that French lady and the young Polish lad will be subject to the full force of the hostile environment. At some point, out of the blue, they will lose their jobs, their access to the NHS or the tenancy of their homes. It will be just like the Windrush fiasco, but for them it will be even worse because they will have no way to rectify their terrible situation and will be subject to removal. Imagine what that will mean for those individuals.
In terms of scale, we need to recall that few schemes such as the one that the Home Office is attempting ever get close to a 90% reach, never mind a 100% reach, and that even if the Home Office does amazingly well and achieves a 90% reach of EU nationals, that will still mean that hundreds of thousands of people will be in situations like that. There are a million reasons why we will not get close to a 90% reach.
Dr Whitford
Is it not concerning that, when we look at the monthly figures, we see that more than 40% of EU nationals are only being given settled status? I am sure MPs right across the House will have had examples of people, particularly women with caring responsibilities who have been here for decades, who are not being given it. My concern is for those very elderly people who are not even considering that this might apply to them.
Stuart C. McDonald
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I was just about to give an example of the sort of person who will be caught out by this, and there are many more. It is not just those who did not think they needed to apply because of the complex stays, or their immigration and nationality situation, but also those with, for example, low digital literacy or poor language skills. There are also those who accepted pre-settled status and overlooked the subsequent deadline for applying for settled status, as well as children and vulnerable adults. The list goes on.
This is absolutely not the way, as the Government have said previously, to avoid a new Windrush disaster. This is the way to create a disaster on an even greater scale. It is not just me saying this; it is the3million campaign group, legal experts and think tanks, and it is the cross-party conclusion of the Home Affairs Committee, so we call on the Government to think again and to provide the status automatically and keep the settlement scheme open so that people can access the physical document that they need, as and when they realise they need it. That is what amendments 5 and 6 seek to do, as does the official Opposition’s new clause 5, which, because it would do everything in one go, is the one that we will support in a vote.
The second bad choice the Government made was in relation to documentation. The withdrawal agreement allows for the provision of a physical document as evidence of status. Alternatively, that proof could be in digital form. The Government have gone for a purely digital form of proof, which is completely contrary to what the overwhelming majority of EU nationals would prefer. How many Members would be happy to rely exclusively on a piece of Government digital code in an online system as the sole means of evidencing their right to live, work or study here or anywhere else? If the digital form were available alongside the opportunity to request a document, that would be fine, but it is completely unacceptable for it to be in digital form only. What if our retired French lady is digitally challenged, as the expression goes? How difficult will it be for her to prove her rights? And what will happen when the young Polish guy seeks to persuade a landlord that he is eligible to rent a flat in England? We know how great the chance is that the landlord will rent that flat to a person with a passport, way before they will go through the process of checking the Polish lad’s immigration status. The right-to-rent scheme is already in limbo because judges have found such episodes occurring with other less complicated forms of proof. What if the digital system crashes altogether at a crucial moment, as has happened already? Again, the Home Office is making decisions against the interests of EU citizens. That is why amendment 5 calls for a physical document to be provided.
I like to be fair, so let me acknowledge one good decision that the Government have made. That was the decision to open the settled status scheme to a broader category of citizen than was strictly required by the withdrawal agreement. Amendment 6 seeks to cement that into primary legislation, rather than leaving it to the whim of an immigration Minister to do away with at the drop of a hat by changing the immigration rules. The official Opposition’s new clause 5 would do the same thing.
A third disappointing choice that the Government have made relates to the make-up of the Independent Monitoring Authority—that is, the body tasked with ensuring that citizens’ rights under the agreement are properly protected. The withdrawal agreement gives broad discretion as to how the board should be made up. Given the torrid time that EU citizens are enduring, the last thing they want to see are provisions that mean that the person appointing the members of the IMA is a person who has ignored all the other concerns and broken the key commitment that she made to them during the referendum. That is of course the Home Secretary.
Yes, there are other provisions that are designed to create a degree of independence for the IMA, but in advance of the creation of the authority, it is the chief inspector of borders and immigration who has been monitoring the settled status scheme and who has prepared reports and recommendations about it. That makes him a strong candidate for knowing what skills are required for the Independent Monitoring Authority, but there are other independent people who could do the task and give EU citizens much more faith in the process. Additionally, in amendment 52, we seek to strengthen the role of the devolved Administrations in the process of appointing those IMA members being selected because of their knowledge of conditions in the devolved areas.
Turning to appeals, it is positive that the Bill makes provision for a right of appeal against settled status decisions, but not that it does so only by way of regulations or immigration rules. There should be a statutory right of appeal in the primary legislation. These significant rights are not to be toyed with on the whim of a Minister. So again, we support parties who have tabled amendments to put the right of appeal in the Bill directly.
In amendment 7, we challenge the Government’s giving Ministers the right to make provisions about judicial reviews of certain citizens’ rights immigration decisions. This seems unprecedented, and if the Minister can provide another example of such a power being granted, I would be grateful to hear about it. There is huge concern about what the Government want to do with judicial oversight of the decisions that they make, and I hope that this is not an early example of Government attempts to curtail judicial oversight of significant and sensitive immigration powers.
I turn now to the registration of British citizenship. This is another scandal that has developed on the watch of successive Conservative Home Secretaries negligently conflating naturalisation with registration. After the British Nationality Act 1981 came into force, many children and young people who would automatically have been British through birth here were instead given a statutory right to register as British if they met certain criteria such as living in the country for a certain period or their parents becoming settled or British. These criteria reflect the fact that for those children and young people, the UK is their true home. De facto, they are British and should therefore be legally entitled to British citizenship. A Conservative Minister of State said, when introducing the relevant provisions in 1981, that it is extremely important that those who grow up in this country should have as strong a sense of security as possible. That is not the same as naturalisation, where the law gives the Secretary of State discretion in relation to people who have chosen to make the UK their home. But the Home Secretary charges for children to register, as if the two things were equivalent. Even though the administrative cost to the Home Office of registration is around £370, the Home Office has been charging over £1,000 for several years—something the now Chancellor acknowledged was a huge sum when he was asked about it at the Home Affairs Committee. Imagine anyone in this Chamber being asked by an official for £1,000 before their child could be confirmed as British and could exercise their rights as a British citizen. It would be deemed outrageous and totally unacceptable to every single person in this Chamber. It is similarly outrageous that the Home Office is inflicting that fate on other children who are just as entitled to their British citizenship.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Stuart C McDonald and Philippa Whitford(6 years, 7 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Dr Philippa Whitford (Central Ayrshire) (SNP)
Stuart C. McDonald (Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East) (SNP)