My Lords, two years and 13 days after it received its First Reading in this House, I am pleased and a little surprised to have the opportunity to debate this Bill. This is not a complicated piece of legislation; it is not a complex issue. At heart, it is a simple matter of honouring a pledge made over three years ago to EU citizens resident in the United Kingdom. The Bill seeks to establish a declaratory approach in which the right of residence for EU citizens is based upon eligibility rather than acquired through application. Registration would therefore merely confirm the existing right and missing any deadline would render one undocumented but not unlawful.
Clause 1 amends the Immigration Act 1971 to grant the right of abode to all EEA citizens resident in the United Kingdom on the date of exit from the European Union. Clause 2 sets out what would qualify as being resident in the UK for this purpose and Clause 3 specifies the basis on which a person would be regarded as a family member, based on existing EEA provisions. In summary, the Bill would put into law the categorical commitment made to EU citizens during the referendum campaign by, among others, our most likely next Prime Minister. In June 2016, Boris Johnson, Michael Gove and Priti Patel made the following pledge in a written statement on behalf of the leave campaign:
“there will be no change for EU citizens already lawfully resident in the UK. These EU citizens will automatically be granted indefinite leave to remain in the UK and will be treated no less favourably than they are at present”.
Since then, every one of those individuals has served in government, at Cabinet rank, yet that pledge has still not been honoured. The aim of this Bill is to right that wrong and to put their pledge into law.
Noble Lords will be aware that, after a long and discreditable period, the Government finally conceded last year that a unilateral commitment must be made to EU citizens. As a result, the settled status scheme was established and began operation earlier this year. While the scheme does provide a route for EEA nationals to apply for settled status and, if successful, to be granted permanent residence rights, it does not deliver on the promise made to EU citizens by the leave campaign, for a number of reasons. First, the settled status scheme is not the automatic route to indefinite leave to remain that was promised by the leave campaigners. It is an application-based system with a finite cut-off date of 30 June 2021, or 31 December 2020 in the event of a no-deal Brexit. After midnight on that date, any person who has not applied will be deemed to be unlawfully in the United Kingdom whether or not they would otherwise have been eligible for permanent residence under the scheme.
I do not think that anyone seriously believes that the Home Office will be able to reach, and grant settled status to, all the 3 million EEA nationals estimated to be resident in the UK in just two years. Based on evidence from studies of other application-based government schemes, it is possible that between 5% and 10% of those eligible will not have been reached by the cut-off date. That means that tens or even hundreds of thousands of otherwise eligible people may find themselves undocumented and criminalised in as little as 17 months’ time. Inevitably, those most at risk will be vulnerable: young people in care, the elderly and the marginalised. I hope that no future British Government would even contemplate attempting to detain and deport such people; but, at the very least, that so many may become criminalised by the state will create a Kafkaesque nightmare which will then have to be painstakingly unravelled. In the process, many thousands of people will be subjected to misery and disruption.
My Lords, I am delighted to support the Bill introduced so powerfully by the noble Lord, Lord Oates. I sincerely wish him well. There is no reason why that wish should not be fulfilled. The new Prime Minister could very easily decree that the Bill be fast-tracked through both Houses in the same way as the current Northern Ireland legislation.
I want to make another personal reference, not to the noble Lord, Lord Oates, but to the absent noble Baroness, Lady Hayter. I am certain that the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, will do an admirable job today, but the noble Baroness has led on EU affairs with enormous distinction and great dedication. It is monstrous and outrageous that she should have been dismissed from her post. I know that she remains the Deputy Leader of the Labour Peers, and long may she so remain, but that she should have ejected from the Front Bench is frankly appalling and I am sure I speak for everyone in your Lordships’ House in sending her our unanimous good wishes for a happy return.
As I said, I am very glad to support the Bill. The noble Lord, Lord Oates, quoted the pledge given by the famous three: Boris Johnson, Michael Gove and Priti Patel. That pledge has been echoed by many fervent Brexiteers in the past three, increasingly difficult, years. My noble friend Lord Forsyth has himself made plain in your Lordships’ House that this is an issue on which he sees eye to eye with those three who made the pledge. It is something we should have done immediately after the referendum. I proposed in your Lordships’ House before the end of June 2016, and I was not alone, that we should take the moral high ground and make a unilateral gesture to demonstrate that, if we are preparing to take back control, we could take immediate control on this issue and so put the minds at rest of all those EU citizens living in this country, many of whom make an enormous contribution to our country.
One has only to think of our universities and the number of EU students and—much more important in this context, in a sense—lecturers and professors who give leadership, add distinction and help make our universities what they are, recognised among the greatest in the world. I had personal experience at the end of last year when I unfortunately had to be in hospital for a time and I frankly lost count of the number of EU citizens working as doctors and nurses and in other capacities in that hospital. That has been the experience, I am sure, of many noble Lords. These are people who have helped to make our country the community or communities that it is. They deserve that unilateral gesture. How much better it would have been had we got this out of the way before the end of 2016.
My Lords, the only obvious defect in the Bill—it is a glaring defect and not the fault of the noble Lord, Lord Oates—is that it is so late. I am very glad that it is resuscitated, but as the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, says, the Bill does what we should have done three years ago. It was a glaring negotiating error not to have unilaterally and voluntarily done exactly this three years ago; a negotiating error almost as serious as that of not drafting and putting forward a framework for the future relationship before we triggered Article 50. We should have done this before we triggered Article 50. Had this been on the statute book, the whole atmosphere at the start of the negotiation would have been completely different. Because it was not, we made life uncertain and in some ways difficult for 6% of the population of these islands. It was an extraordinarily inhumane thing to have done. Because it is not on the statute book, we have acted dishonourably.
The noble Lord, Lord Oates, is quite right to recall the statement by Mr Johnson and Mr Gove of 1 June 2016, before the referendum, when they promised an automatic system with no question of application. By not having this on the statute book, we have gravely damaged the interest of 1.3 million British citizens who live in continental Europe. Their position is still uncertain. Their legitimate expectations were overturned by the results of a referendum in which most of them had no vote, because the Government had not fulfilled their manifesto commitment to change the eligibility for the franchise of citizens resident abroad. Their position is still in doubt despite Mr Costa’s admirable February amendment in the other place. It is now very difficult to get this dossier out of the withdrawal agreement. I suspect that the withdrawal agreement is dead, but this dossier is lurking in the middle of it. If and when—let us say if—we leave the European Union in a no-deal Brexit, the EU has made it clear that the three dossiers in the withdrawal agreement are where future negotiations will start, not with trade. That means that there will be an inhibition on member states acting unilaterally to respond reciprocally to what we should have done three years ago and could do now with the Bill. If we are interested in setting at rest the minds of 1.3 million of our fellow citizens living in the EEA, we should pass the Bill as quickly as possible.
My Lords, it is frequently the case that, when Bills or debates are introduced, speakers congratulate the Peer who has introduced the legislation or secured the debate. Naturally, I do so this afternoon. It is also frequently the case that we talk about a Bill or debate as being timely. This Bill had its First Reading over two years ago, as my noble friend Lord Oates pointed out.
As the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, has pointed out, the debate goes back rather further. In preparation for today’s debate, I seemed to recall that I had spoken on this issue several times in the immediate aftermath of the referendum. I went back to Hansard and found a Question for Short Debate in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, on 14 July 2016. On that occasion, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Keen of Elie, was responding to the debate, and I pointed out what a pleasure it was to have the fifth opportunity of questioning the fourth different Minister on the issue of the rights of EU citizens resident in the United Kingdom. That was within three weeks of the referendum. I thought that today the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, might be responding—at least she has had the opportunity of answering on the same set of issues many times before—but I am delighted to see the noble Baroness, Lady Barran. I know that she at least has not had to answer any of my questions on this issue before.
It feels as if, over the last three years, the only thing that has had settled status, a right to reside in this Chamber, the other place and the country, is the Brexit groundhog that keeps appearing and raising its ugly head in whatever debate and on whatever issue. What did we have in the Northern Ireland (Executive Formation) Bill? Amendments on Brexit. It has been the subject of debate for months and years; the rights of EU citizens have been uncertain for the three years since the referendum. That is, frankly, disgraceful.
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Oates, on introducing the Bill and on his steadfast dedication to protecting our country’s reputation at this vital time.
This is a question not just of the rights of good people who have chosen to work and live in our country but of honour, trust and decency. Are we a country that keeps our word? We have heard from other noble Lords of the unequivocal assurances given to the 3 million EEA nationals who are living here, that they would be automatically granted indefinite leave to remain in the UK, with rights no weaker than now. Instead, as so eloquently described by the noble Lords, Lord Oates and Lord Kerr, and my noble friend Lord Cormack, they are being offered that settled status based on immigration regulations that can be changed by Ministers, and which are not even set in primary legislation. This will offer a code—no physical proof or stamp in a passport—and it must be applied for by a strict cut-off date, so if someone is unwell or unaware and misses the deadline, they will lose out. That is hardly an automatic grant of the indefinite leave to remain they were promised. The House of Commons Home Affairs Committee also supported a declaratory approach, with physical proof of approved rights.
So I add my thanks to the noble Lord, Lord Oates, for producing the Bill, which I fully support, and I urge the Minister on the Front Bench—whom I welcome very much to this debate—to offer, if she can, some words of support or assurance to the House that she will take this seriously and bring it back to the department for further discussion.
As so many noble Lords have said, we should have done this right at the start of the Article 50 process. We have treated these good people inhumanely. They have been subject to uncertainty—we have not taken the moral high ground. So, again, I urge the Minister to relay the desire to act, albeit belatedly, with the honour and decency that has been expressed in this debate, to demonstrate that our Government’s words can be trusted—especially at this late stage, when a new Prime Minister will seek to reopen negotiations with the EU, which it has spent so long drawing together and which it has said it is not willing to reopen. I urge the Minister to consider the calls to fast-track this piece of legislation now and show good will and appreciation towards the EEA citizens who perform such important work for us all, which should have been present right from the start. The Bill does what would have been needed and what we can still offer in a spirit of good will. It has my full support.
11:56 am
The Lord Bishop of Rochester
My Lords, some hundred yards down the road from my cathedral in Rochester there is an establishment known variously as La Providence or the French Hospital. It is an alms house-type foundation established for those of Huguenot descent. After it was bombed out of its previous premises in the 1940s, a predecessor of mine, the late Bishop Christopher Chavasse, who was himself connected with that community, found premises for it in Rochester—and that is where it remains. That building, which I walk past several times a week, is for me a kind of visual reminder of the spirit of generous welcome shown to that earlier generation of European migrants.
Like other noble Lords, I welcome the Bill and thank the noble Lord, Lord Oates, for bringing it forward. It seems to seek to give practical and statutory expression to that spirit of generous welcome which I referred to, and what it proposes has the benefit of fairness and simplicity: the presumption that a person should be here, and that being here they should remain—in contrast to the scheme we now have where, as others have indicated, whatever its intention, it can feel as if it starts from the opposite presumption, and people are having to prove that they should be here.
These matters are of particular concern to my friends in the Roman Catholic community. The Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales estimates that, of the 3 million, some 60% would claim some form of Catholic connection or heritage, or active practised faith. However, even in my own Church of England diocese, despite being part of an English Church, I have clergy who are European nationals, and clergy spouses who are European nationals and who are having to go through these processes, and I find more and more people in my congregations—200-plus congregations across west Kent and south-east London—who are EEA nationals, brought here very often for work purposes. They indulge me by allowing me to speak French to them occasionally in various congregations around the place—and German, at which I am rather less proficient.
These are among the people who are making hugely valuable contributions economically and socially in our society, as other noble Lords have already observed. Like the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, I had cause to be treated by the NHS earlier this year, and the consultant who looked after me post surgery was a Polish Catholic who has been here for 30 years—just one example of the kind of people who have committed themselves hugely to the life and well-being of our nation and people.
Many, such as that gentleman, have been here for decades, or even generations. Many are, as we know, closely related to British citizens. We need these folks and it behoves us to make it as easy as possible for them to stay. Indeed, there is an argument of national self-interest here: if we do not make it easy for them to stay, we may be the ones who suffer.
My Lords, I too congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Oates, on introducing the Bill. I admire his clarity and care in saying nothing that I do not wholeheartedly agree with.
My Lords, I have made this mistake before, many years ago—probably about 24 years ago. So I think we should hear from the noble Viscount first.
12:01 pm
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The Government’s argument for a cut-off date seems to be that it will help avoid a repeat of the injustice inflicted on people by the Home Office in the Windrush scandal, but it will do nothing of the sort. The cut-off date will simply empower the Home Office lawfully to inflict such injustice. Under the settled status scheme, there will be no hope of redress for EU citizens as there was for at least some of the Windrush victims because, after June 2021, they will have automatically lost their lawful immigration status by virtue of having failed to meet the cut-off date, regardless of being otherwise fully eligible for permanent residence under the scheme.
A second issue with the settled status scheme is that, unlike the system of indefinite leave to remain, it does not provide successful applicants with physical proof of their right to be in the United Kingdom. Instead, they must rely entirely on a code issued to them by the Home Office which has to be entered into the relevant website by whoever requires proof of their immigration status. The3million group, which represents EU citizens in the UK, has highlighted the difficulties that this will inevitably cause for EU citizens. Interactions with landlords, airline staff or other officials obliged to check immigration status will become fraught with anxiety, dependent on the fragility of an internet connection and the resilience of a government IT system.
Thirdly, the settled status scheme requires proof of continuous residence over a five-year period. That may be difficult for some people to provide and contradicts the leave campaign’s pledge, which was made to all EU citizens lawfully in the UK regardless of the length of residence.
Finally, and perhaps most fundamentally, the current settled status scheme rests on immigration regulations which can be changed virtually at the stroke of a ministerial pen and on the undertakings of Ministers who may be out of office as early as next week. Noble Lords will not be surprised that EU citizens find it hard to have much confidence in a scheme constructed on such shaky foundations. This Bill, by contrast, would for the first time provide all EEA nationals resident in the United Kingdom with a guarantee in primary legislation of their right to remain. Consequently, their status could be altered in future only with the active consent of both Houses of Parliament.
Beyond the flaws in the principles of the settled status scheme, there are also concerns about its practicalities. Since it started operating, the Government have made much of the fact that few applications have been rejected, but we should not get carried away by this reassurance. Anecdotal evidence suggests that, while applications may not have been wholly rejected, many people are told that they have not provided sufficient documentary evidence and must provide more. Others who have applied for settled status have been granted pre-settled status instead—we do not know how many because, for some reason, the Government do not seem to say, but I hope that, at least on this point, the Minister will be able to enlighten us today.
The last three years since the referendum have been a time of fear and uncertainty for EU citizens resident in the UK and British citizens resident in the EU. That fear and uncertainty have been compounded by the increasing prospect of a no-deal Brexit and the repeated failure of Brexit politicians to honour the pledges they have made. For those affected, this is not a debate about some abstract principle; it is a debate about their lives and their futures, whether they will retain the right to remain in the country in which they have chosen to live, whether their loved ones will have the right to settle with them if in future they should return home, whether their pensions will continue to be uprated and whether they can continue to access healthcare and remain in employment. It is about all the things that are the very essence of a person’s sense of security. That security should never be reliant solely on the whim of an ever-changing cadre of Ministers increasingly cavalier about the impact of a no-deal Brexit on the rights of millions of British and other EU citizens. This Bill cannot solve all those difficulties—that can be done only by remaining in the EU—but, imperfect though the Bill inevitably is, it will provide a greater sense of security and certainty to the EU citizens who have contributed so much to our country. With the co-operation of Ministers, it could be strengthened further to address the concerns of British citizens in the EU about family reunification rights and the uprating of pensions in the event of a no-deal Brexit.
In October 2017, speaking to the Polish community, Boris Johnson, the man we are told will be our Prime Minister in a matter of days, had this to say:
“I have only one message for you all tonight: you are loved, you are welcome, your rights will be protected whatever happens”.
Since then, as on so many things, his actions have not lived up to his rhetoric. This Bill will offer him the opportunity to demonstrate, if he becomes Prime Minister, that he is capable of marrying his actions to his words and finally honouring the definitive and categorical pledge he made to EU citizens more than three years ago. I beg to move.
However, in those time-honoured words, we are where we are. Of course I welcome the fact, as does the noble Lord, Lord Oates, that the Government did make a unilateral declaration. I do not for a moment doubt their total sincerity in making that declaration but, as the noble Lord pointed out in his admirable introductory speech, there are a number of problems with it and it will not give that immediate peace of mind that a far-sweeping piece of legislation could have given. I therefore strongly support what the noble Lord is arguing for today. As I said when I began, at the moment we have a demonstration of how legislation can be fast-tracked, and this is something that deserves that treatment.
Whatever the fate of this Bill, it is really important that the new Prime Minister repeats what he said to that Polish audience a little while ago and that he takes immediate action. Speaking as one who was a remainer but who fully accepted the result of the referendum, and would have accepted the Prime Minister’s deal, as I made plain on many occasions, I look to Mr Johnson, who is so likely to be Prime Minister, to show that he is a man of his word in this area. Because a lot could hang on that—for Mr Johnson, for the Conservative Party and for our country. I am delighted to support the Bill.
I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Oates, about the defects in the system that the Home Office is now operating. The principal defect is that it is not automatic; it is an application system. We have the rigmarole of pre-settled status, settled status and indefinite right to remain, or the decision to go instead for British nationality. These are complicated questions being tackled by people some of whom are not necessarily internet savvy, some of whom do not necessarily have access to legal advice or the right linguistic skills. To take one example, in the event of a no-deal Brexit, if only 15% of the children from other EU member states who are now resident in this country fail to operate this system and regularise their position by the end of next year, 100,000 children living in this country will be in a Windrush situation. They will be here with irregular status and potentially—possibly actually—criminalised because they are here. They will be vulnerable to hostile environment policies and deportation if they go back. The noble Lord mentioned Windrush. It is an exact parallel, except there are an awful lot more people this time.
If you want to get rid of that risk, you need a legal backstop—to use a new word—underpinning the Home Office system. I am not saying that the Home Office system should be torn up, but the right to citizenship should be underlined, as is set out in this Bill. For those who cannot work the application system, there should be a safety net lurking round. We will need something like that at the end of next year if we fall out of the EU with no deal, because public opinion in this country will be just as shocked at the way we are treating some of these people as it was to discover how we had treated Windrush people.
In addition, as a more straightforward argument to advance, if we put this on the statute book, the likelihood that similarly generous reciprocal treatment will be handed out to the 1.3 million British citizens living in continental Europe will rise very steeply.
I agree with those such as the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, who say that now is Mr Johnson’s moment. He said what he said. He made a promise three years ago on 1 June 2016. Will he carry it out? Some foreign friends ask me to define Mr Johnson’s political philosophy; I find this quite difficult to do. It is quite easy to explain what Thatcherism meant. It is quite easy to explain what new Labour meant. It is very difficult to define “Johnsonism”.
I look forward with keen interest to seeing the evidence, but one streak in Johnsonism is probably completely genuine—I think he is libertarian on issues such as this, and naturally likely to want to do what he said he would do three years ago. I very much hope that, whatever the Government tell us today, in a very few weeks they will tell us that they strongly support this Bill and would like to see it on the statute book as soon as possible. I certainly support it.
In the immediate wake of the referendum, the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, queried—perhaps to the world in general—whose fault it was that the rights of EU citizens were not unilaterally guaranteed. In those days after the referendum, there was virtual unanimity in this Chamber that the rights of EU citizens should be guaranteed immediately. The noble Lord, Lord Cormack, has pointed out that he made that case; the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Hudnall, made the point on the Labour Benches; as did the noble Lords, Lord Forsyth and Lord Lawson; from these Benches, so did I and other Peers. The only people who disagreed at that time were any Ministers having the misfortune to be responding from the Government Front Bench. I am not even sure that those Ministers disagreed with us, but they clearly had to put forward the party line. In the three weeks following the referendum, the party line was set by the then Home Secretary: the right honourable Theresa May, MP for Maidenhead. That line persisted through her time as Prime Minister. There was a sense that, however many Members of your Lordships’ House and of the other place called passionately for the rights of EU citizens to be guaranteed immediately, Mrs May was not agreeable to it.
We said that EU citizens should not be treated as pawns, and yet what happened in the negotiations was precisely that: EU citizens and their rights, and the rights of UK nationals by extension, as the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, pointed out, were used as hostages in the debate. It was wrong then; it is wrong now. Three years after the referendum, EU citizens should be certain of their rights, but they still cannot be. I therefore very much welcome the opportunity to have this debate today. I realise that Private Members’ Bills very rarely make it to the statute book, but, as my noble friend made clear in introducing today’s debate, in many ways the issues we are discussing have already come on to the agenda through the Government’s settled status regime.
However, the Bill under consideration today goes a stage further. It would guarantee the rights of EU and EEA nationals. It would do it as a right, not requiring endless form-filling. It has been customary across the Chamber today to talk about the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, in her absence. She made it very clear, in the previous debate, how difficult it is for people to fill out the necessary forms about indefinite right to remain; there are 80 pages of documentation. For EU citizens wanting indefinite right to remain, there is traditionally the need to say where they have been in the five years since they started being resident here. If you are an EU citizen exercising your right to free movement, your passport will not be stamped if you go back and forth between London and Brussels, or wherever your hometown might be. If you go home to Wrocław, Tallinn or any European city, your passport will not be stamped. Nobody keeps that sort of record. The rules that were in place made it very difficult for people to fulfil the requirements. The proposed settled status scheme is an improvement, but, as noble Lords have made clear, it still requires EEA nationals currently resident here to make applications. There is no automaticity.
I feel some sympathy with the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, for having to respond to this debate, because it touches on a set of issues that are outside the purview of the Home Office. The Windrush scandal has been mentioned. However, these applications have to be made through the Government’s IT procedures, and universal credit has demonstrated some of the difficulties with that. Is the Minister sure that the arrangements put in place for applications will be satisfactory, and is the government IT system fit for purpose? As the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, pointed out, not everyone will be IT-savvy, so what arrangements do the Government envisage to assist people who do not have access to the internet? Indeed, is the government software available on all types of mobile device? Those have been issues of concern.
In addition, the recent experience of the European Parliament elections demonstrated the problems even for fairly savvy EU citizens resident in the United Kingdom. Many EU citizens who were on the electoral register were disenfranchised at the European Parliament elections. They voted without difficulty at the local government elections in early May, and three weeks later they turned up at the same polling stations and found that they were disenfranchised. They had failed to fill in an additional form, which some local authorities had informed them about, while others had not. However, if you suddenly get an email from your local authority, you do not necessarily open it and think, “My goodness! Here is a form I need to fill in to be able to vote”. If EU citizens who were seeking to vote and who were sufficiently interested to vote were disenfranchised, the danger is that many EEA nationals will find that, on the day we leave, they have not filled in the necessary paperwork.
The proposed legislation is open and tolerant. As noble Lords have pointed out, it would give the incoming Prime Minister the opportunity to live up to the words of the Vote Leave campaign and to make the situation clear for any EU citizens resident here at the time the United Kingdom leaves the European Union—if it happens on 31 October or on some other date. Theresa May did not campaign for Vote Leave; Boris Johnson did. Can the Minister undertake to send out words to Mr Johnson, in the event that he becomes Prime Minister next week, and suggest to him that this would be the perfect opportunity to live up to some of the positive narrative that the Vote Leave campaign was so keen to put forward in 2016?
I also add my words of support, as expressed by my noble friend Lord Cormack, to the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, for all the work she has done, and I express my regret at the way she has been treated, notwithstanding that I welcome the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, who is here today.
I have a particular question for the Minister to which I hope she will be able to respond. It has been brought to my attention by the Children’s Society and concerns those children and young people who are looked after—who are in care—when we leave the EU. If the noble Lord’s Bill were to pass, it would automatically include them and give them the right of abode. Can the Minister give some assurance about how those incredibly vulnerable children and young people will be treated even if the Bill does not pass?
We have already heard about the complexity of the documentation required. For some of those young people, it is almost impossible to find the documentation to secure the right to remain. There is evidence that local authorities, who are responsible for them—in part, no doubt, because of resource issues—are not always pursuing applications on their behalf, where that is necessary, with the alacrity needed. Legal advice in these cases can be complex and hard to come by. I hope that for this group of vulnerable people in our midst, for whom we have a particular responsibility, the Minister may be able to give some assurance as to how things will stand.
EEA Nationals (Indefinite Leave to Remain)… · Order Paper · Order Paper