EU/British Citizens’ Rights

(Urgent Question): To ask the Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union if he will make a statement on what efforts the British Government have made to fulfil the instruction of this House, dated 27 February 2019, to seek agreement on EU and British citizens’ rights and in particular the protection of British citizens in the EU in the event of no deal.

I start by paying tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for South Leicestershire (Alberto Costa). It is testament to his passionate defence of the rights of EU citizens and UK nationals that the amendment he brought before this House was passed unanimously—a rare feat. I congratulate him on his work.

I thank my hon. Friend for organising a recent meeting with representatives from British in Europe and the3million to discuss their proposal to seek a joint UK-EU commitment to adopt part 2 of the withdrawal agreement in any scenario. The Secretary of State was grateful for the opportunity to hear their views and the views of my hon. Friend on that matter. As my hon. Friend will be aware, we have written the EU’s chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, to report those views, particularly to make it clear that in a no-deal scenario adopting the citizens’ rights agreement is far superior to 28 unilateral solutions. I have also had representations from the devolved nations of the UK indicating their support for that approach. For example, Mike Russell, the Scottish Government’s lead Minister on EU exit recently wrote to the Secretary of State to set out the Scottish Government’s support for adopting the citizens’ rights agreement.

The Government have been steadfast in their commitment to protect the rights of EU citizens. They are our friends, colleagues and neighbours, and we want them to stay. We are already implementing our no-deal offer to EU citizens in the UK, and the EU settlement scheme opened successfully on 30 March, with over 750,000 EU citizens having now applied. The Secretary of State wrote to the EU to seek its views on adopting the citizens’ rights part of the withdrawal agreement in any scenario, and Michel Barnier responded on 25 March. Last night, the Secretary of State issued a response to Michel Barnier, reporting recent conversations with my hon. Friend for South Leicestershire, the3million and British in Europe, and asked for officials to be able to continue to work together to explore how best we protect the citizens’ rights in all scenarios.

In the response, the Secretary of State reaffirmed that adopting the citizens’ rights part of the agreement as a UK-EU solution will offer the greatest protection for UK nationals in the EU and EU citizens in the UK. That is due to the importance of rights, such as the agreed social security co-ordination provisions, that cover areas such as reciprocal healthcare and the accumulation of pension contributions, which require a reciprocal agreement to provide the best level of operation. The Secretary of State wrote to my hon. Friend this morning with a copy of that letter, which was deposited in the Library and published on gov.uk.

Finally, I want to reaffirm that citizens’ rights have been a priority throughout the negotiations, and it is an area that both the Government and this House take extremely seriously. As such, the best way to guarantee those rights, both for UK nationals in the EU and EU citizens in the UK, is for this House to approve a deal.

I thank the Minister for his response. I also want to put on the record my gratitude to the Secretary of State for meeting with the3million and British in Europe a few weeks ago. It is inconceivable that a British Government—let alone a Conservative Government—could allow the rights of British nationals working, living or studying in the EU to vaporise overnight on 31 October. However, we find ourselves in a deeply unpalatable position in which our fellow citizens, and EU nationals resident in this country, have had their rights wrongly placed on the negotiating table.

I am not here to criticise the outgoing Prime Minister. I am here to invite whoever is going to take over, and the current Minister and his team, to ratchet things up a few notches to ensure that the will of this House, which was unanimously passed on 27 February, to carve out the citizens’ rights element of the withdrawal agreement, thereby protecting under international law the rights of British nationals in the EU and the rights of EU citizens here, is carried out. We have seen two letters thus far, and I am inviting the Government to do the right thing, which means ensuring that a task force is set up urgently. Members of the existing Government, senior civil servants and other stakeholders should meet urgently with Michel Barnier, Donald Tusk and other stakeholders in the EU to convey the unanimous will of this House. There is no disagreement across the House or, indeed, across the Brexit divide on the protection of citizens’ rights—no disagreement at all. This is low-hanging fruit, yet, for some reason or another, we simply have not achieved that agreement.

I welcome the Minister’s work, and I know he has done a lot of work in particular on the voting rights of EU nationals here. I compliment him on his work, but when this House is united and when the devolved nations of our country have backed the House of Commons on this issue, there is no excuse for the UK Government to do anything other than intensify their efforts to get an agreement on the rights of citizens.

My hon. Friend rightly calls on us to ratchet up the pressure, and I assure him that we will. I also assure him that, whoever takes forward the leadership of our party and our country, will feel pressure not only from him but from Back Benchers on both sides of the House to continue pressing on this issue. Of course, we made a commitment to him and to British in Europe that we would respond to Mr Barnier before the next European Council on 20 June. I am glad that we have been able to deliver on that commitment today.

As hon. Members on both sides of the House will know, the European elections were held between 23 and 26 May and Government activity had to respect the purdah period imposed because of those elections, but it is right that we pressed forward swiftly after that to ratchet up the pressure on ring-fencing, as my hon. Friend said.

Meanwhile, I assure my hon. Friend that there is a large citizens’ rights team in my Department that is working closely with colleagues in other Departments, including the Home Office. The team has been working tirelessly to ensure that citizens are given the certainty they need to plan for life once the UK leaves the EU. Our no-deal policy paper confirms that EU citizens resident in the UK by exit day can apply to the settlement scheme to secure their status in a no-deal scenario. As I mentioned earlier, the settlement scheme, which launched on 30 March, has had over 750,000 applications. Almost 700,000 of those applications have been concluded, with none being refused.

The UK pushed hard in negotiations for reciprocal voting rights, but as my hon. Friend knows, they did not form part of the withdrawal agreement. We have set out that we will seek to agree bilateral deals with all member states to secure those rights for the future. We are pleased to have now made significant progress on bilateral agreements, having signed agreements with Spain, Portugal and, today, Luxembourg. The Secretary of State signed the latter just a few hours ago, and we hope it will set a strong precedent for reaching agreements with other EU neighbours and friends to protect the right of UK nationals to continue voting in local elections.

We are very aware of my hon. Friend’s key point. His amendment enjoyed the unanimous support of the House, of all parts of the United Kingdom and of all parties from all parts of the spectrum of opinion on Brexit. We remain committed to delivering on citizens’ rights, and we are focused on making sure that we reach an overall agreement to secure an orderly EU exit for the UK, but we remain committed to executing the will of this House and we eagerly anticipate Michel Barnier’s response to our letter on ring-fencing.

I start by paying tribute to the hon. Member for South Leicestershire (Alberto Costa), who has won respect on both sides of the House and in the country for the way in which he has championed the cause of EU citizens in the UK and of British citizens in Europe. We were pleased to back his cross-party amendment on 27 February.

The hon. Gentleman is right to be worried that, as Conservative Members apparently prepare to crown a leader who seems willing to take the country to a no-deal Brexit, EU citizens face new uncertainty. Many of the disastrous consequences of a no-deal Brexit have been spelled out, not least by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who has talked of the deep damage it would do to our economy and our living standards. It would have helped if the Prime Minister had not spent so long talking up a no-deal Brexit as a viable option, but insufficient attention has been paid to the consequences for citizens’ rights. Lives have been thrown into uncertainty by our current situation.

It did not have to be like this. If instead of making bargaining chips of EU and British citizens, as the hon. Member for South Leicestershire pointed out, the Government had accepted our motion back in July 2016 to provide a unilateral guarantee to EU nationals in the UK, we could have quickly secured reciprocal agreements to protect the rights of Brits in the EU27. Those agreements would have stood ring-fenced, insulated from the calamity of the Government’s withdrawal agreement.

It was clear in December 2018, when the Government backed off from their vote on the deal, that this issue would have to be addressed, so why did it take the action of the hon. Gentleman and the vote of this House to secure that action from the Government? After Michel Barnier wrote to the Secretary of State on 25 March, why did it take three long months for him to reply?

There is a great deal on these issues on which the hon. Gentleman and I agree. I suspect we take the same dim view of the attractiveness of any kind of no-deal exit, but where I disagree is on his narrative about the Government’s urgency. We have always put citizens at the forefront of negotiations, and we reached an agreement with the EU on the detail of a citizens’ rights agreement some time before the House voted on the amendment in February.

The EU has said repeatedly throughout this process that nothing is agreed until everything is agreed. We have challenged that in taking up the call of my hon. Friend the Member for South Leicestershire for ring-fencing, and we will continue to press the case for ring-fencing, but it is a bit rich for the hon. Member for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield) to suggest that the Labour party takes this more seriously than my party does when the Opposition Benches are a gaping empty space for this urgent question.

It is vital that we all work together, reflecting the cross-party nature of the amendment to secure these rights. In that respect, I hope the hon. Gentleman will welcome the progress that has been made today and the further progress that we intend to make in the months to come on the issue of voting rights.

A number of my constituents or their family members, even children, are caught up in this, and many of them have contacted me. Whatever one’s views—whatever my views and whatever their views—of our future relationship with the European Union, they frankly do not deserve the very real anxiety this is causing.

Given what the Minister has said today about where the block now lies, it is not now a lack of will on the part of Her Majesty’s Government, although they could have gone a lot further before the withdrawal agreement was set. Will he convey to Mr Barnier my sentiments and those of my constituents before he replies to the Secretary of State’s letter? This is not a game. This is the lives of people living in my constituency and in many other constituencies. The very real anxiety of which I spoke is there, and Mr Barnier can address it. He must understand that before he replies to the Secretary of State’s letter.

I fully appreciate my hon. Friend’s point. The Secretary of State’s letter to Mr Barnier has gone, and there is a copy in the Library, but this is something we should reiterate to our European counterparts at every opportunity. We have all said this, and the EU has said, I trust in good faith, that it wants to put citizens at the forefront of negotiations. We have an opportunity to do so, and we should continue to remind people that it is about individuals living in all our constituencies. We really value them, and we want to provide them with the greatest possible reassurance.

I commend the hon. Member for South Leicestershire (Alberto Costa) not only for securing this urgent question but for his tireless efforts on behalf of EU nationals in the UK and of UK nationals overseas. I welcome the assurances in the Secretary of State’s letter, but two big questions still remain. First, why has it taken so long to get not very far? Three years since the referendum, the UK Government have still failed to give the assurances that the Scottish Government were prepared to give the day after the referendum if only they had the powers to do so. I welcome the assurances from the Government, but those assurances ring hollow when we remember the shameful complacency this Government showed two weeks ago when they completely washed their hands of the fact that thousands of these same citizens were denied the basic right to vote in European elections. Why do the Government still insist on a settled status scheme based on, “You apply and we might say no”? And they do say no; far too often, and for no valid reason, they turn down applications from my constituents and others. Why do the Government not go for the scheme the Scottish Government have suggested, which is simply an approach of, “This is your home, thank you for being here, please stay”? Why can we not have a system that recognises residency here as a matter of right, not as a privilege at the whim of the Home Office?

The Secretary of State’s letter said that devolved Administrations support his approach. The letter he referred to from Mike Russell finished with the words that EU citizens

“are our friends, our colleagues and our family and they deserve to stay in the place they have chosen to call home without the insecurity that Brexit has created.”

If the Government agree with that, why do they not get rid of the insecurity right now, and guarantee unconditionally and permanently the rights of all 3 million EU nationals who currently call these islands their home?

I recognise the hon. Gentleman’s passion to ensure that those rights are guaranteed. If he looks at what we have done in terms of the negotiated agreement and the no-deal paper on citizens’ rights as to what will be done, he will see that that is exactly the guarantee that we are providing. He asked an important question about the nature of the settled status scheme and why we feel it needs to constitutive rather than declaratory. With the best will in the world, a purely declaratory scheme risks causing confusion and difficulty for people further down the line. We saw that with Windrush. We want to ensure that people have a simple way of proving their rights under this agreement and we think a constitutive system is a better way to achieve that. We are continuing to work on this with EU citizens’ groups up and down the country, including in Scotland, to make sure that they have all the information they need to secure that. He says that applications have been refused. There are some applications where people are being asked for more evidence or more detail, but there are no applications that have been refused.

I welcome the urgent question from my hon. Friend the Member for South Leicestershire (Alberto Costa) on the EU/British citizens issue, as it concerns a large number of my constituents and I am very concerned. I commend the Minister for his statement, his response to this urgent question and the work he has done. The Government have made a commitment, but does he share my disappointment that the EU has not been more positive and proactive on such an important issue?

I do share my right hon. Friend’s disappointment that this has not got further at this stage. Interestingly, a number of MEPs have spoken out asking the EU to go further, as have some of the Parliaments of EU member states, including, recently, the Dutch Parliament, which has called for further progress on this issue. We will continue to press the EU to make progress on this matter because we all recognise the benefits of providing the maximum reassurance to our 4 million citizens.

The best way to ensure the rights of EU citizens in the UK is for us to stay in the EU. The very least the Government should do is guarantee that we will not leave the EU until those citizens and UK citizens in the EU are guaranteed the exact same rights and status as they have now. This affects more than one in five of my constituents, and their friends and family, so will the Minister commit to that—or are we at the mercy of the Dutch auction that is the Tory leadership shambles?

I respect the passion with which the hon. Gentleman makes his arguments, but he must understand that this country had a vote on whether to leave the EU and that vote was decided by the people. We should now make sure that we provide precisely the guarantees he is talking about for our citizens. As I said in my statement, the best way to achieve that is through a ring-fenced citizens’ rights agreement or a whole withdrawal agreement. That is better than anything we can do or 27 EU member states can do unilaterally.

Many of my constituents are affected by this issue, either because they are EU citizens in Chelmsford or they have relatives living in other EU countries. I am particularly concerned about women who may have taken career breaks to care for vulnerable relatives and who therefore find it more challenging to provide the paperwork to prove where they have been. Clearly, it is in our interests and those of EU member states to resolve this as quickly as possible. Does the Minister have any further indication from individual EU member states of the progress they want to make, now that the European elections are over and as soon as the European Parliament starts sitting?

My hon. Friend asks an excellent question. We have been meeting a range of EU member states and we always press them on these issues, both in terms of their own unilateral preparations and to make the case for a wider agreement on this front. There are of course a variety of responses. We have seen in the unilateral arrangements of EU member states that every single one has done something to reassure UK citizens, but the level of the response varies. We will continue to press them on this, so that they continue to reciprocate the strong offer that the UK is making.

I find it hard to contain my anger at the charlatans and snake oil salesmen who will again tonight, on television, be claiming that no deal presents no difficulties; it might present no difficulties for them. I wish to ask the Minister a specific question. In response to a letter that I sent to him, the Minister for Europe and the Americas said:

“If the UK leaves the EU without a deal, and there is no agreement with Germany to continue reciprocal healthcare arrangements, UK Nationals would no longer receive coverage through the S1 form.”

The advice he gives is for them

“to take out German health insurance.”

Can the Minister here today give an assurance to me, and to all UK citizens who might be in that position in any EU country, that the UK Government will pay for their health insurance, rather than them?

Order. Just before the Minister responds, let me say that I recognise and respect the very strong feelings on this matter, but I am sure that the right hon. Gentleman, a former Deputy Leader of the House, whom we all hold—or I certainly do—in the highest esteem, would not refer to any Member of this House as a charlatan. I am sure he would not do that. If he were doing so, dexterous as he is in the use of language and given the full vocabulary with which he is blessed, I know that he will withdraw that term and substitute it with another.