Residency cards needed for EU citizens, say MPs
EU CITIZENS granted “settled status” to stay in the UK after Brexit should be given physical residency cards to prove their rights, not forced to rely on online checks, a parliamentary report has said.
Home Office plans to offer EU nationals a digital code to prove their status risk causing confusion, and could result in individuals losing access to housing and jobs, warned the House of Commons Exiting the EU Committee.
The cross-party committee said that the experience of Windrush-generation migrants denied benefits and healthcare and even removed from the UK showed the potential for “devastating consequences” for people without the right papers.
Despite the UK and European Commission declaring that the citizens’ rights chapter of Britain’s withdrawal agreement has been finalised, the committee warned that “substantial issues remain unresolved”. It called for urgent clarification from the 27 remaining EU states on the preparations they are making to regularise the status of UK nationals living in their territory, warning that more than one million expats risk being “left in the dark”.
And they said the UK Government must put pressure on to protect their rights, including ongoing free movement between the 27 countries for UK expats living on the continent.
The report raised particular concern about the Home Office’s plans to issue digital codes to more than three million EU nationals expected to apply for settled status to live and work in the UK.
Chairman Hilary Benn, MP for Leeds Central, said: “Citizens’ rights was one area of the Brexit negotiations marked as green in the March draft of the withdrawal agreement which implied that it was all sorted. But the evidence we have heard suggests it is far from being finalised.”
A Government spokesperson said: “We have made great progress on citizens’ rights, securing an agreement which will see EU citizens in the UK and UK citizens in the EU be able to continue their lives broadly as now.
“The Home Office has also announced further details about how EU citizens and their families can obtain settled status in the UK.”