My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, but I do not know what evidence she has for her assertion that the Government intend to use this issue as a negotiating encounter for wider issues once the negotiations start. On the contrary, at the end of last year the Prime Minister made an attempt to resolve this issue in advance of the negotiations on a reciprocal basis, but that was rejected out of hand by Chancellor Merkel and President Tusk on the grounds that no discussion of this issue could take place until Article 50 was invoked.
My noble friend Lord Hailsham, in his extremely eloquent speech, launched a great deal of obloquy on the legislation that would be necessary to deprive EU nationals of their rights. I agree with him, but that legislation is not before your Lordships’ House this afternoon. The question that your Lordships have to decide this afternoon is what action to take in the light of the truth—perhaps unpalatable to many of your Lordships, and unpalatable to me, because I have made it clear on numerous occasions that I actually favour a unilateral guarantee and think that that is what the Government should give—that the Government are not going to change their mind and that the other place, where this issue was raised, considered, voted upon and resolved by a majority of 42, is not going to change its mind either.