Immigration: EEA Nationals

(asked on 25th September 2019) - View Source

Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, pursuant to the Answer of 6 September 2019 to Question 282339 on Young Offenders: EU Nationals, whether EEA national prisoners' relatives who are third country nationals are eligible to apply to the EU Settlement Scheme.


Answered by
Brandon Lewis Portrait
Brandon Lewis
This question was answered on 30th September 2019


A person’s continuity of residence in the UK for the purposes of eligibility un-der the EU Settlement Scheme is broken when they serve a sentence of im-prisonment. They will therefore not generally be eligible to apply to the scheme while they are serving that sentence.

Only where a person has already acquired the right of permanent residence under EU law, or has already completed a continuous qualifying period of five years’ residence in the UK, will a sentence of imprisonment not affect their eligibility, or that of their third country national family members, to apply under the scheme and only then if the sentence is not serious enough to lead to their deportation.

Official statistics – ‘EU Settlement Scheme quarterly statistics, August 2019’ – providing detailed information regarding operation of the scheme were pub-lished on 22 August 2019. These can be found at: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/eu-settlement-scheme-statistics-august-2019

The Home Office is committed to publishing more detailed quarterly statistics on the EU Settlement Scheme. Home Office statisticians are currently con-sidering the content of the next quarterly release and will take into account the views of statistics users.

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