It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Redditch (Rachel Maclean) and to take part in this debate. It gives me the opportunity to pay tribute to public sector workers for all they do in keeping us safe, nursing us, educating us, caring for us, keeping the streets clean, running Government Departments and everything else in between.
Since we had the Home Secretary at the Dispatch Box—I think for the first time—I want to focus on one particular group of workers: the migrants in the public sector workforce who serve us day in and day out, and in particular the EU nationals who currently live with the uncertainty of Brexit hanging over them. The immigration Bill that was mentioned in the Queen’s Speech but largely ignored by the Home Secretary today will have a profound impact on them, as well as on the future workforce of our public services.
During the referendum the Home Secretary, along with the Prime Minister and the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, made an unconditional promise to EU nationals who were already here: that if Brexit happened, their rights would continue automatically, so there would be no need for any application—in other words, a declaratory system. The question is why the Home Secretary seems set to renege on that promise, when failure to keep that promise inevitably means that, even with the Home Office pulling out all the stops, tens of thousands, or probably hundreds of thousands, of EU nationals will miss the cut-off date for settled status applications, and will end up in this country without any legal status at all and liable to removal, as the Minister for Security confirmed last week.
No application process of this type ever gets close to 100%. Getting even to 90% would be an achievement, but that would still leave hundreds of thousands of people in an even worse situation than that of the victims of the Windrush scandal—not just without proof of their status, but without any status at all. When that disaster unfolds, the Government cannot say that they have not been warned. It would be much better if they listened to the calls of the3million and the unanimous view of the Home Affairs Committee now, rather than trying to clean up the mess after the event.
The arguments put forward by the Home Office about why it does not want to go down that road simply do not add up. There would still be every incentive for
citizens to apply for proof of their status, given that they would face the hostile environment if they did not obtain the necessary documentation. On the question of documentation, I urge the Government to think again, to ditch the “digital only” nonsense pursued by the Home Secretary’s predecessor and to allow the EU citizens applying to the scheme to have a physical document to prove their right to remain in this country.
On Monday, the Prime Minister said that EU rights would be somehow confirmed in the new immigration Bill, but it was not absolutely clear to me what he meant by that. Insofar as he plans to put the rights that EU nationals of settled or pre-settled status will have into primary legislation instead of the easily amended immigration rules, that is a small step in the right direction and something that we sought to do through the previous immigration legislation. However, assuming that people still need to apply, it does not amount to the automatic extension of rights that the Home Secretary and the Prime Minister promised in the referendum. Indeed, if they are planning to cement the cut-off date for applications into the Bill, they are making matters infinitely worse, reducing any flexibility to extend the deadline when we inevitably realise that hundreds of thousands have not applied and are not going to apply in time.
Let me also raise concerns about the number of EU citizens who are being awarded pre-settled status rather than settled status. There are strong reasons to believe that many thousands are being awarded the more precarious and limited rights of pre-settled status when in fact they should be receiving settled status and permanent residence. That has consequences not only in terms of their having to make yet another application to protect their position but by limiting the rights and entitlements that they have in the meantime. A simple but powerful good-will step would be to scrap pre-settled status altogether and allow all EU citizens who have been living here to have permanent residence from day one. That is what the Scottish Government have suggested to the UK Government, and I hope that the Home Secretary will listen to that.
Turning to the future system, is it not symptomatic of the chaos that is Brexit that we are here, more than three years after the EU referendum, without any real clue as to what more the Government intend for our future immigration system than the supposedly magical promise of an Australian points-based system? As the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May) pointed out, we had a points-based system introduced by the previous Labour Government, but it was slowly whittled away by the Conservatives. So I call on the Government, even today, just to give us a broad outline of what exactly they intend to put in place. Can the Government at least confirm that they are finally ditching the requirement for a £30,000 salary before anyone can come to work here? Such a threshold would be a disaster for many of the jobs in our public services. It should not be tweaked; it should be abandoned altogether.
As the right hon. Lady also said, a newspaper report at the weekend suggested that a new system could be used, as it is in Australia, to encourage migrant workers to go where they are most needed. That happens not just in Australia but in countries such as Switzerland, New Zealand, and, probably most famously, Canada. Can we please put Scotland at the front of that queue, because, as I hope the Government appreciate, all of
Scotland’s projected future population growth comes from net migration? Our economy and public services need it, especially if free movement is to come to an end. Contrary to the slightly fantastical claims made by the hon. Member for Angus (Kirstene Hair), at the end of the day, ending free movement, regardless of what is put in its place, is going to reduce access to the labour market for employers in Scotland rather than increase it.
If there is no deal, will the Home Secretary listen to the calls made by universities and by my hon. Friends today and accept that the proposed system of temporary relief for three years is an absurdity for students who are coming to study for four years—the vast majority of undergraduates in Scotland as well as those on a number of courses throughout the UK?
Our migrant workers make an immense contribution to public services in this country. Sadly, I fear that the immigration policies of this Government will continue to do them, and those services, a massive disservice in return.
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