MPs seek settled UK status for EU youngsters in care

SENIOR MPs are behind a drive to ensure EU children in care are automatically granted “settled” UK status in a bid to avoid “another Windrush scandal”.

Tories Tim Loughton and Andrew Mitchell and Labour’s Yvette Cooper want the Social Security Co-ordination Bill to give children automatic and indefinite leave to remain under the EU settlement scheme.Their amendment would also grant the same right to adults from the European Economic Area or Switzerland who have previously been in care.

Former children’s minister Mr Loughton says the amendment will help protect those who had “the hardest start in life”.

He said: “It would also avoid the risk of another Windrush scandal emerging when these children in care reach adulthood only to find the necessary applications were not made for them as children and they have no status to remain in the country.”

During the Windrush scandal people who came to Britain from the Caribbean in 1948 to work and their descendants were detained and denied legal rights.

Scores ofWindrush generation people were also wrongly deported by the Home Office.