We are now seamlessly moving on to the next debate, the second Opposition day motion on the EU settlement scheme. I inform the House that Mr Speaker has not selected amendment (a) in the name of Wendy Chamberlain. I call Stuart C. McDonald to move the motion.
That this House regrets the end of Freedom of Movement following the UK’s exit from the European Union; notes the enormous contribution EU nationals make to the UK economy and society, including in response to the ongoing covid-19 pandemic; regrets that the Government did not grant automatic right to remain to EU nationals despite assurances made during the EU referendum campaign; welcomes the fact there have been over six million successful applications to the EU Settlement Scheme; but further notes with concern that inevitably, many thousands of EU nationals have not applied; regrets that provision in relation to late applications will not prevent injustices and the loss of rights of many thousands of EU citizens; calls on the Government to recognise that the ongoing health emergency has also impacted on outreach work and the ability of EU nationals to apply, and to respond to this either by automatically granting Settled Status or by scrapping or extending the 30 June deadline; and further calls on the Government to introduce physical proof of Settled and Pre-Settled Status and to work with the Scottish Government on agreeing a transfer of immigration powers to allow the Scottish Government to create a Scottish visa or Scottish migration system.
I am grateful for opportunity to introduce this debate on the EU settlement scheme and I am very grateful to hon. Members across the House for taking part, especially as some minds may be starting to drift towards Euros of a different sort just a few miles away in north-west London.
The starting point, and I hope a matter of unanimity across the House, is what our motion says in relation to the enormous contribution that our EU nationals have made to every part of the UK: to our economy, our public services and culturally. I hope we also all agree that we want these EU citizens to stay. That is why we selected this topic for debate: to allow us to press the Government on whether their settlement scheme really reflects those goals as well as it could, and what we feel are the obstacles making it harder for some to stay than it should be. It gives us the opportunity to ask what happens now that the EU settlement scheme deadline has passed and what can be done to protect those who, as things stand, have lost their rights.
The difficulty for the SNP in this sort of debate is that while they are quite right to talk about some teething problems relating to our leaving the EU, will those problems not be compounded a thousand times more if the United Kingdom was broken up? For centuries Scots have settled here. Would it not be absurd if, Scotland having left the United Kingdom and joined the EU, Scots had to apply for settled status here or we had to apply for settled status in Scotland? What is the answer?
The answer, quite simply, is that there is a country that the right hon. Gentleman may be aware of called Ireland, which is part of the common travel area and enjoys full blown free movement of people from the rest of the EU. There is absolutely no question of people having to apply for visas to get across borders and so on. It is perfectly possible and there would be absolutely no need for any such thing.
I thought the hon. Gentleman would make that answer. That settlement was made in 1921. The difficulty for the SNP is that it would have to reapply as a new state to join the EU. It is very unlikely that the EU would bend all its rules, as happened in 1921 in Ireland, so it would be in grave difficulty. I am afraid the SNP has to answer that point. If breaking up the EU is so bad, breaking up the UK is even more difficult.
I am not going to go down the rabbit hole the right hon. Gentleman is trying to take me down. All the indications we have had from people involved in the European Union and from other member states is that they would be perfectly happy to welcome an independent Scotland into the EU and I very much look forward to the day that that happens, but I want to get back to the subject of this debate, which is the status of EU citizens who are here today.
Steve Double (St Austell and Newquay) (Con)
I know the SNP wants to present this image of a hostile environment and how the settled status scheme is not working. However, the experience of actual people is completely the opposite. Only this morning I had an email from a constituent who missed the deadline for a technical reason, and my office helped get her application in. This morning she received an email from the Home Office confirming that all her rights are protected while her application is processed. The scheme is working well, and the picture the hon. Gentleman paints just is not true.
I will come back to that, and I acknowledge there has been significant success with more than 6 million people applying for the scheme, but yesterday I met the3million which, of all organisations, is the one that knows exactly what is happening on the ground and its implications. I will come to all sorts of problems that still exist in the scheme, and the whole purpose of this debate is to try to iron out those problems and to see what we can do to fix them.
The point I was making is that tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of people are in a pretty difficult situation because of the fundamental design of this system. Whether it is tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands, it is an extraordinary, painful and awful moment.
On Thursday morning, in contrast to the hon. Gentleman, I received my first email on this subject from somebody who applied late: “My mother is quite distressed, as she needed to apply for settled status by 30 June but did not think it applied to her, maybe in denial. She needed someone to help fill out the online forms and upload the documents. The OTP”—one-time PIN—“code did not arrive on her very old phone and, as well as tech issues, she has recently applied to renew her Italian passport. My dad thinks her Italian ID card will be sufficient. I just cannot believe that someone who has been here for 50 years and is married to a UK citizen has to go through this process. Also she is very worried that her cancer drug will be withdrawn.”
I am hopeful that the situation will be resolved, in exactly the way the hon. Gentleman was able to resolve it for his constituent, but what cannot be undone is the stress, anxiety and hurt that this whole process is causing people. That is just one of hundreds of such cases that we can all expect to see in the weeks, months and even years ahead. The vast majority of people will find it appalling, because it is unnecessary.
An Italian constituent has written to me and is very concerned about the lack of physical evidence, which they think will be problematic for future mortgage applications, banking, work and the rest of it. Does my hon. Friend agree that the Government need to look at this and make sure that people have physical evidence of their settled status?
That is a good point, and it is not something I will speak too much about today, although I have spoken about it previously. I know other hon. Members will make that case, and they have my full support.
The scheme did not need to operate like this. There were different options available to the Government that would have prevented this disastrous cliff edge, or at least alleviated its worst impacts, and for which hon. Members on both sides of the House have advocated. My party passionately supported continued free movement. Alternatively, along with many Members on both sides of the House, we advocated a declaratory system in which an Act of Parliament would simply have declared that EU citizens resident at the required date retained the same rights as before, which would have provided far greater security and peace of mind. That, of course, is essentially what was promised during the EU referendum.
The now Prime Minister, Home Secretary and Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster all signed a pledge:
“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.”
Tell that to my constituent and the many others currently without their rights. That promise was simply reneged upon, despite its three authors occupying all the roles in Government required to deliver it. One of them should be at the Dispatch Box to explain exactly why the promise was not kept.
Craig Williams (Montgomeryshire) (Con)
May I ask the hon. Gentleman to reflect on his point about causing stress to constituents across the United Kingdom, which he made rather than welcoming the 6 million people who have applied and the 5 million who have settled status, which is the proportionate response? Will he inform my constituents and his that they are very likely to get settled status, rather than scaremongering as he currently is?
I am absolutely not scaremongering. I spoke for about two hours yesterday to the3million, which I have repeatedly asked the Minister to meet, and I do not think he has yet. The organisation receives reports from EU nationals across the country who are encountering difficulties, some of which I will set out. I have already welcomed the fact that more than 6 million people have applied, and I will say a little more about that in a moment. I am not scaremongering; I am passing on what EU nationals are telling the3million and me.
On the other hand, the Government are saying that we should shout about and celebrate the success of the EU settlement scheme. As I have said, I praise the civil servants who have worked hard to ensure that more than 6 million applications have been processed and granted. The reason why tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of people have fallen through the gap is not down to the civil servants, albeit that there have inevitably been rough edges and problems because of the fundamental flaws in the decisions made by the Home Secretary and her predecessors. In essence, they opened a horrible big trapdoor and they now want us to thank them for the fact that only tens or hundreds of thousands of people have fallen through it—potentially into the hostile environment.
I am particularly concerned about the status of children, many of whom have grown up in the UK: their status is unclear and it is even unclear whether they are British citizens. There is also a big loophole when it comes to pregnant EU citizens who have applied to the scheme. The status of their yet-to-be-born children is really unclear. The situation is full of loopholes and flaws.
Lots of questions and loopholes have been identified. The fact that the Home Office had to issue hundreds of pages of guidance, even in the two or three weeks prior to the end of the transition period, shows that the issue has been difficult for it to address.
I come to what this debate should be about, which is looking forward to what can be done. We absolutely maintain that even now a declaratory scheme would be far preferable—people would still apply to the settlement scheme to prove their status, but at the very least the huge uncertainty would be removed and security would be delivered for them. Short of that, surely to goodness the transition period should be extended. There are a million reasons why that would be sensible—not least covid. Outreach work has been curtailed and embassies and scanning centres have been closed. People are not ready.
It is important to remember that this is not just a question of EU nationals being ready, but of employers, the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency, Department for Work and Pensions staff, landlords, local authority staff and bank staff having to be ready and NHS staff having to understand. As I said, the Home Office itself was still pumping out hundreds of pages of guidance in June and making tweaks to the system. I do not think the Home Office was ready for the end of the transition, and I do not think it can expect all those other organisations to be ready either. As I will mention, there is also an enormous backlog of cases.
Alternatively, the Government could at least remove the requirement for a reasonable excuse and keep the scheme open for the duration. It has to be open anyway, both for late applications and for people with pre-settled status who then go on to try to secure settled status. Why not simply allow people to come forward as it becomes necessary to secure their rights?
I am absolutely delighted to hear this speech, because the hon. Gentleman is explaining the complexities of leaving a Union that we were part of for about 40 years, yet somehow he seems to assume that leaving this Union is really hard but that leaving one that includes the military, finance, pensions, homes and everything else is going to be incredibly easy. I am not quite sure whether he will explain that disconnect.
The point, as I have said, is that the Government could have made this process a hell of a lot easier. Government decisions have made this difficult, not anything else.
We know from research that discrimination is widespread when private actors have to undertake even basic checks, such as passport and visa checks, and it is blindingly obvious that the half a million people who are in the queue are going to face discrimination on stilts if they have to explain these processes. Other than telling employers and landlords to follow guidance, what more is being done to clamp down on and prevent this discrimination? What monitoring, even, is being done?
In theory, public bodies should find this easier, yet we hear of cases of universities not being prepared to confirm that students are eligible for home fee status, or the Student Loans Company not confirming eligibility for student finance until their status is decided. Just an hour ago, I learned of a universal credit case being turned down because, even though the national insurance number and date of birth all matched up, the Department for Work and Pensions could not verify the digital share code. What is the Home Office doing to identify and accelerate these cases to ensure that no one is denied the educational opportunities that they are entitled to? How will people be compensated when they have been wrongly refused entry to the UK, work or housing, or been charged for NHS treatment or incorrectly denied home fees or student finance because of a failure to apply the law correctly?
Another huge problem is that use of the checking service provides a landlord or employer with only a six-month guarantee of protection from prosecution, but why would an employer or landlord take on someone when they can have a guarantee of only six months’ rent or six months’ work? That is why it was wrong to end the transition while over 500,000 people were in this perilous position. A freedom of information request in May showed that 100,000 people had been waiting for over three months for a decision. That is a hell of a long time to be in this semi-legal limbo.
I have been lobbied quite strongly by businesses in my constituency, where there is a big shortage of HGV drivers, for instance. Analysis indicates that there are up to 76,000 vacancies in the sector, which hits logistics and construction. Would not one reform that would help with the economic problems we face in Wales and Scotland be for the British Government to allow the Welsh and Scottish Governments to put sectors of the economy where there are skills shortages on the shortage occupations list?
I think the hon. Gentleman makes an absolutely fair point, but as I say, there are many different ways we could do this, and all I ask is that people engage with these ideas, rather than just dismiss them out of hand. At the very least, the Government should think again about the remote areas pilot scheme recommended by the Migration Advisory Committee, which the Government just promptly ditched without any sort of explanation at all, otherwise it will be clear that there is no prospect of Scotland having any real influence over these vital powers while it is part of the UK.
In the meantime, I believe we all want to protect EU citizens. We have offered our proposals. We believe that the status quo is fraught with a million problems. There needs to be action and significant changes if protection of EU citizens is to be a reality.
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In a moment, I will get into the nuts and bolts of the rather messy situation we find ourselves in, but it is important to start by making clear what happened last week and why. Last Thursday morning, at the stroke of midnight, thanks to policy choices made by successive Conservative Governments, tens and almost certainly hundreds of thousands of people to all intents and purposes lost their rights to live, work, study and enjoy family life here in this country. It does not matter how long they have been here or whether they really have any home elsewhere, the clock struck midnight and these people became subject to the full force of the hostile environment. The first question for the Minister is whether he will tell the House what estimate the Home Office has made of the number of those who have failed to apply prior to the deadline. If we are to have a proper discussion about the scheme, surely that is the least of the information the Government must provide?
To be absolutely fair, the guidance on the reasonable excuse provision is reasonably generous, and more generous than it could have been, so I thank the Minister for that. But the very existence of that test plants huge seeds of doubt in people’s minds—if I have any doubt about whether my excuse will be accepted, am I putting myself at risk of enforcement action? I say that we should continue to encourage people to come forward, not discourage them.
That last proposal would be better than nothing, but it would not protect people from the impacts of the hostile environment in the meantime. That hostile environment is supposed to be undergoing an end-to-end review in the light of Wendy Williams’s Windrush report. The fact that the review has not yet been completed should be another ground for extending the grace period. More fundamentally, the hostile environment should be entirely suspended until the review takes place and its findings are implemented. All these are real, sensible, constructive options, open to the Government, that would ease the pain of the process. I hope the Government listen.
I turn now to a tiny number of examples of how difficult, technical and confusing the process has become. I am highlighting what groups such as the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants and the3million are telling me. I do that to press the Minister for a response and to underline the case that there has at least to be an extension to the transition period.
First, I turn to the question of those who applied before the deadline but are still waiting for a decision. How on earth is it that, as I understand it, the backlog has risen to 570,000 cases? Back in October 2019, the resolution centre was able to conclude just over 400,000 cases, but in each of the three months up to the deadline, as I understand it, fewer than half that number were concluded each month, despite additional staff having been drawn in from the Post Office and elsewhere. Is that backlog not enough in itself to justify an extension?
Can the Minister tell us how many applications received in June were dealt with in the five-day target? According to EU settlement scheme statistics, applications from children comprise 15% of the total, with decisions on 25% of applications still pending; they also comprise around a quarter of applications pending for over three months. Why is that?
In theory, the full rights of people with outstanding in-time applications are protected while they wait—and that, of course, is welcome. But what is the reality on the ground? Already, all sorts of reports are coming in to representative groups about employers and landlords—and also the Home Office’s own Border Force staff—getting the checks wrong. That does not surprise me, because the situation is messy.
Some people with outstanding in-time applications will provide their prospective employer or landlord with a certificate of application to show that they have made the application. Some will provide a physical certificate, printed off, that leads to the employer contacting the employer checking service or the landlord checking with the landlord checking service. Others still will not have a certificate of approval but just an acknowledgement email; that, too, should lead to the checking service being consulted.
But in the last few days, the Home Office has started sending digital certificates of application to avoid the need for anyone to use the checking services, which can take a couple of days. The applicant will provide a code to the prospective employer or landlord, and when that is input into the system it should confirm that an application is outstanding. I hope hon. Members followed that, because all of us in this House are employers, but given that the guidance was issued only a couple of weeks before the deadline, I suspect that there are huge swathes of employers and landlords out there who do not have the first clue what somebody means when they approach them for a new tenancy or a new job and say, “Here’s my digital code. This should tell you that I have an application outstanding.”
Finally on this particular topic, I understand that there are also significant numbers of cases where people have completed parts of the application process online but not the whole process—for example, even just the final “submit” stage. Is the Home Office taking steps to identify and reach out to those people as well?
Turning to people who apply late, or have applied late and are waiting for a decision, it is welcome that they can continue to access healthcare and that, if I understand it correctly, they can continue to exercise rights that they are currently exercising, such as keeping an existing job or social security benefit if they apply with 28 days’ notice. However, the huge gap here is that there is no right to take on a new job or new accommodation in England, or to claim a new social security benefit or use other services, so an important first question is why the Home Office thinks this is consistent with the withdrawal agreement, which states that pending a decision on any application, all rights will be deemed to apply to the applicant.
It is easy for the Government to say, “Well the process is quick and therefore these issues should not be widespread. Get the application in and then get on with your job hunt or social security application”, but, in practice, it is not that simple. We know that over 100,000 people had been waiting for more than three months in May, and remember, too, that, as we know from Windrush, it is precisely when people are making new job applications or applying for social security or a tenancy that they suddenly realise that they have not applied and should have done. Waiting for three months at these moments of crisis could destroy lives, with employment, accommodation and financial support all missed out on.
The Home Office has mentioned a process for accelerating certain cases, which is welcome, but how does that work? How can we ask on behalf of our constituents that their case is accelerated for these very good reasons? What will the criteria be for accelerating cases, what will the timescales be, and what does that mean for other cases and how long they will take?
Finally, on late applications, I previously asked the Minister what would happen if someone incurred health charges because they had failed to apply for the settlement scheme, but, having realised their error, they then went on to apply late and successfully showed that they had a reasonable excuse. If I recall correctly, the Minister suggested at the Home Affairs Committee that it would be ridiculous to then insist on those charges being paid. After all, they had had a reasonable excuse for a late application, but, as I understand it—I would love to be corrected—that is exactly what will now happen in England. How can that be justified? Why is it that someone who is considered to have reasonable grounds to apply late can still be held liable for healthcare charges incurred before submission of their justifiably late application? It seems an incredibly strange situation.
What about those who have not applied at all? I want everyone to apply, though late—I am sure we all do—so what is the Government’s strategy here? Is there not a danger that the reasonable excuse test is going to put people off, especially if, as suggested in the guidance, it has to be more strictly interpreted the more time goes on? Why is that advice there? Those who encounter border enforcement, whether the Home Office version or delegated private actors such as employers, are going to have 28 days’ notice to apply, but what has been done to make sure that some of the people most likely to have missed a deadline—vulnerable and marginalised groups, and maybe those with health issues or with poor English—understand what that notice means and what exactly is required of them? For example, is it going be available in different languages, will they be signposted for advice and what happens if that 28-day deadline is missed?
It is much more likely that people who have not applied will become aware of the problem only through an encounter not with Border Force, but with an employer, the DWP, a landlord or somebody else, so what work has been done to ensure that, rather than just saying no, they signpost and, in the case of Government Departments, assist them in ensuring that an application can be submitted. The Government are committed to funding grant-funded organisations supporting EU citizens with late applications until September. Why is it only to September? Can we have funding for beyond that as well?
Finally, I turn to the issue for those who actually get settled or pre-settled status. Even if somebody is successful, that is not the end of their problems, and others, as I have said, will speak about the lack of a physical proof of status. There are more than 2 million people with pre-settled status, and many of them will struggle to prove the five-year residence required for settled status. What support will be available to help them with equally vital applications, and what happens to those who fail to apply at the time when their pre-settled status expires?
The settlement scheme may have been designed to be straightforward, but its interplay with our complicated immigration system means that it just cannot be. I struggle to follow its implications, and I suspect many hon. Members will have struggled to follow them as well, yet guidance for employers and landlords was issued just a couple of weeks back. This has, I am afraid, at the end of the day, ended up being a rush job. Even if all our other ideas are rejected, at the very least we need a longer transition period, and for the umpteenth time, I do ask that the Minister meets the3million campaign group.
In closing, during the referendum the now Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster also promised that, after Brexit, Scotland would have immigration powers. That seems to have gone the same way as his promise to EU nationals. We have debated the devolution of immigration or at least some immigration powers before, and it is on these occasions that the normally very measured Minister tends to start engaging in tub-thumping rhetoric rather than the arguments in the discussion. I am not going to repeat all those arguments today, but report after report from the Scottish Government, academics, thinktanks and immigration lawyers offer myriad reasons why this should be done, and templates for how this could be done.