EU Settled Status Scheme

Debate between Wera Hobhouse and Drew Hendry

Tuesday 27th November 2018 Westminster Hall

[Drew Hendry (Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey) (SNP)]

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

Frankly, it is appalling that people still face uncertainty about settled status. Recently, I held Brexit public meetings throughout my constituency and shared with my constituents all the information available from the Government website. They did not feel reassured, and only asked more questions. The continued uncertainty about settled status is costing communities and families who contribute socially and economically. In the public meetings, I met EU nationals who are doctors, nurses, teachers, service workers and many more. They remain terrified by the uncertainty. They still have no answers to the most basic questions about their future.

The uncertainty about settled status has already had a devastating impact on the ability of our local employers to recruit the workforce they need among people from the EU countries. Instead, those people who would be taking up opportunities and jobs in part of the highlands where 20% of our economy is based on tourism, are choosing to go elsewhere in the EU for work. I have heard from countless business owners in my constituency, particularly in tourist towns such as Aviemore, about their staff shortages and the impact of the uncertainty on their businesses.

The uncertainty is particularly frustrating for employers who cannot get a straight answer on the rules. The Home Office has said:

“Employers will not be expected to differentiate between resident EU citizens and those arriving after exit.”

That contradicts comments made by the Immigration Minister, who only days ago told a parliamentary Select Committee that employers would be required to do

“rigorous checks to evidence somebody’s right to work”.

If they cannot agree among themselves, how do they expect employers to know what to do? We are not talking only about those who want to employ EU nationals but about EU nationals who are themselves business owners.

This is a profoundly personal situation for many people. Shortly after the referendum, I was approached by constituents who ran an import-export agricultural business. The uncertainty about their future has forced them to close their business, and now they are concerned because they have primary school-age children; they are worried about their status and whether they are able to live and work here at all. Based on the warm words of the UK Government so far about protecting EU citizens, I have tried to reassure them, saying that I imagine that they will be okay in future, but the lack of any evidence to back that up with fact means that the people affected are, and remain, deeply unsettled.

The hon. Member for Boston and Skegness described the situation as profoundly personal. This is a profoundly personal problem for people, but in my constituency and many like it in Scotland, it is also a profoundly personal situation for the communities in which EU citizens reside as our friends and neighbours. We have the pain of trying to work with them through this Brexit mess.

[Wera Hobhouse]

Is it not true that we might also be failing the most vulnerable? Some of the processes are difficult to understand; some of our more vulnerable EU citizens might not understand them all, and legal aid is not available. Should we request that legal aid be made available to our more vulnerable citizens who find the process difficult to understand?

[Drew Hendry]

I completely agree. For public service workers in Scotland, the Scottish Government have stepped in to support EU nationals, but that is something that should simply be done as a matter of course across the nations of the UK, because there is a big problem. The lack of information and clarity from the UK Government has posed a significant problem.

I am grateful to have had the opportunity to speak in this debate, Mr Hollobone. The UK Government need to get a grip on this. People cannot be left in their current state of uncertainty and worry.

European Union Citizenship

Debate between Wera Hobhouse and Drew Hendry

Wednesday 7th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[Drew Hendry]

My hon. Friend makes a terrific point that we should pause to reflect on during this discussion, and it is not just about the ability of young people to interact in that way. I have often said that I aspire to be an older person and that I am making good progress—I have used that line before and will do so again. It is not just about young people; European citizenship is key to everyone’s ability to broaden their horizons.

Just today—ironically—there was an announcement about the introduction of free inter-rail travel across Europe. Young people face losing out on that; they face losing out on the end to roaming charges and consequently a loss of connectivity; and, as mentioned earlier, they face losing the European health protection that has enabled them to reduce the cost of living and studying.

[Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)]

The hon. Gentleman is describing very eloquently the opportunities that his sons have had travelling through the EU. Is this not precisely a question of education and the opportunities our young people have to travel, and was not the Brexit vote particularly strong where educational opportunities were not very high? Rather than leaving the EU and restricting young people’s ability to go to the EU, is it not important that we extend educational opportunities to all young people in this country?

[Drew Hendry]

On the life chances that young people will have as they grow into adults and move through their careers, it is critical that every opportunity they get to broaden their horizons be embraced, and we should do everything possible to avoid anything that removes their ability to broaden their horizons, such as losing their EU citizenship.

I want to quote a couple of paragraphs from Jolyon Maugham QC:

“The idea of European citizenship has its roots in the aftermath of the second world war, when Winston Churchill”—

my hon. Friend the Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Liz Saville Roberts) quoted him earlier—

“spoke of a ‘common citizenship’ that would unite Europe together ‘in the sharing of its common inheritance’”.

He went on to say:

“European citizenship confers a number of privileges: the right to live in and move freely between member states”,

and all the other things that I mentioned earlier.

“The shared assumption of the European Union and the UK government is that Brexit will mean British citizens will automatically forfeit these rights. But this is being tested in a case brought by a group of UK nationals living in Amsterdam, which I funded with the help of Dutch law firm Bureau Brandeis, which agreed to act for a modest fee.”

He ended by saying, as one who was born in London,

“I am a Londoner, I am British, and I am European. They’re not mutually exclusive”.

The same applies to Scotland. Citizenship of Europe is very important to us. Scotland is not foreign to Europe, and Europe is not foreign to Scotland. We are Europeans.

I am grateful to the Merriam-Webster thesaurus for its definition of “foreigner” as

“a person who is not native to or known to a community.”

EU citizenship has made that an antonym. Those people are our buddies, our chums, our comrades, our confidants, our cronies, our friends, our pals, our mates, our partners and our peers. We are European. We should retain the rights and benefits of European citizenship, and I hope that the Government will ensure that that happens.