Pilot to let EU nationals stay ‘should include families’

A PILOT of the scheme to allow EU nationals to remain in the UK after Brexit should be extended to family members, Scottish and Welsh health secretaries have said.

The EU Settlement Scheme pilot, due to begin in November, is open to health and social care workers and university staff, offering them the chance to apply for settled status before the UK leaves the EU in March.

However, family members are not included, and will have to wait to a later date to have their status confirmed. Scotland’s Health Secretary, Jeane Freeman, and her Welsh counterpart, Vaughan Gething, have urged UK Immigration Minister, Caroline Noakes, to reconsider.

And they have offered to host a pilot in Scotland and Wales in which relatives can take part.

Failure to do so would mean the ministers could not “actively promote” the pilot, they said.

In a letter to Ms Noakes, the health secretaries said: “We reiterate our view that the scheme as currently proposed is much more likely to deter, rather than to encourage, our EU staff from taking this opportunity to clarify their immigration status ahead of the UK leaving the EU on March 29, 2019.

“We ask that you reconsider your decision not to include family members in the scheme.

“If you are amenable, and if your concerns are mainly about making the pilot cohort too large to manage, then we would be content to pilot the inclusion of family members in Scotland and Wales.

“If you are not able to agree to this, we would not feel comfortable actively promoting the scheme to health and social care staff in Wales and Scotland, although it is not our intention to oppose, or in any way to obstruct, the smooth operation of the scheme across the UK.”

In September, Ms Freeman wrote to EU staff working in the NHS calling on them to stay on in Scotland post-brexit.

Her letter said it was an “unsettling time” but stressed “Scotland is absolutely your home”.

She wrote: “I know this must be a very unsettling time for all of you.

“That is why I wanted to reiterate now how much I value the contribution of every member of staff, regardless of their nationality.”

Scotland has about 235,000 EU nationals.

An estimated 26,000 are working in health, social care and public administration.