First, I declare my interests in the register. Secondly, it is getting rather difficult to talk to so many amendments in the space of six minutes. Perhaps I should have applied for a ten-minute rule Bill beforehand and got all my points in through that. I want to talk primarily to my new clauses 2 and 29. I certainly put on record my support for new clauses 7 to 10 tabled by my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis).
2.45 pm
The EU settlement scheme has been a great success, and the Government are to be congratulated. As at the end of the quarter in March, 3,147,000 people had concluded their applications. The problem is that only 14% of them—415,000—were from children, yet non-Irish EU citizen children are estimated to make up more than 20% of the non-Irish EU population in this country. Indeed, the 153 local authorities that responded to a survey done by the Children’s Society had identified only 730 such children who had applied for status, just 20% of the 3,612 children that had been identified in that survey. Of them, just 11% had been given status. Of that, 122 have pre-settled status, meaning they need to reapply in five years.
We appear to have a problem with children in this scheme, and there is a particular and disproportionate problem with EU children in care or those who have recently left care. They are in the UK legally. Under the terms of the EU settlement scheme, they will be entitled to indefinite leave to remain. The problem is that in most cases, they rely on other people to apply on their behalf—typically, the responsible social worker, many of whom are stretched at the moment, desperately trying to find documents and going through overseas embassies to do that. The children will be minors and may have disabilities. They may not even maintain a close link with that social worker, who will frequently change. They may be runaways.
There are all sorts of problems as to how to identify those children and make sure they have the right documentation. If that documentation is not secured now and they are not registered on the scheme, we are looking at another potential Windrush, with a group of children who find themselves in this country with no legal status. That is what the new clause is trying to avoid.