EU Nationals — House of Commons, 2017-11-29
Topic: Immigration
Peter Grant (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): I am pleased to be able to sum up the debate. I hope that the House will forgive me if I do not mention everyone’s contributions, but I do not think I have enough time even to read out the names of all their constituencies—it does give the lie to the myth that the SNP is never interested in talking about anything important, given that both our debates today have been so oversubscribed that they could easily have run for four or five hours each. Instead, I want to pick up on the main themes that have come out on both sides of the debate Let me draw the House’s attention to this document, "The Contribution of EEA Citizens to Scotland", which was produced by the Scottish Government a few days ago. It is only 49 pages long, so it is an extremely brief summary of that contribution. The foreword states: "The Scottish Government believes fundamentally that continuing free movement of people is in the best interests of Scotland and the UK as a whole." What a shame, and what a disgrace, that the United Kingdom Government refuse point black to accept that, because although we have been told that there was a referendum in this country on leaving the European Union, there has been no referendum on the free movement of people or on the single market, and in one country in this Union—this is also true of the local authority that includes Banff and Buchan—62% of people voted to remain Many specific cases have been raised by the Opposition, and no doubt we could have heard many more, had there been more time, and of course there are a great many more such individuals who, for various reasons, do not want to be identified. One Member asked in an intervention what part of the reassurances we do not understand, missing the point completely; it is the 3 million people outside this Chamber who also need to understand, and they are simply not reassured. We have heard Conservative Members say that the SNP is scaremongering. Scottish Conservative Members of Parliament are accusing Scottish National party Members of Parliament of scaremongering about the results and consequences of a referendum. You could not make it up, Mr Deputy Speaker—they could, and indeed they did Another major theme that we have heard from Conservative Members is that the Government genuinely care about the rights of EU nationals living in the United Kingdom. Why then did it take nine months after the referendum, and a full-scale Select Committee inquiry and report, before the Government realised that their system for allowing EU nationals to stay here permanently was utterly unfit for purpose and, in the view of those 1.5 million people, clearly designed to deter them from applying? Are those the actions of a Government who care as much—[Interruption.] It is not rubbish; it is in the Select Committee’s report. If I had time, I would offer to give way to anyone who could tell me that they had read the Select Committee’s report; clearly, Government Members have not. We have heard it said that we cannot give unilateral guarantees because that would prejudice the position of the 3 million UK citizens living in the other EU countries. If they had bothered to read the report—certainly if the hon. Member for West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine (Andrew Bowie), who described the recommendation as "total madness", had bothered to read it—they would have seen that the recommendation was unanimous and that the Committee, before the last general election, contained a majority of Conservative MPs. Madness! They might even have recognised the names of some of those responsible for that unanimous act of madness, because one is now the Environment Secretary and one is the Justice Secretary. If he wants to tell them they are mad, I think that he can say "bye bye" to his political career, almost before it has started British citizens living abroad want the House to agree the motion tonight, because they believe that it is in their best interest that the UK make the first move, but I will finish with one final point. When the hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Afzal Khan) used the phrase "bargaining chips", which came from Ministers initially, not from us, there were howls of protest. What do we call it when Ministers say, "We cannot do A, although we’d like to, because if we do A, it makes it less likely that these people will do B, which we want them to do."? That is called a negotiating tactic. And what do we call A and B in the standard parlance of negotiation? We call them "negotiating capital" or "bargaining chips". They might not like it, but that is the language of their own International Trade Secretary If the Government refuse to accept the motion, or to act on it when it is passed, because they want to use the uncertainty they are creating in the minds of EU nationals here to try to get certainty in the minds of UK nationals living abroad, not only are they going against the unanimous views of a group that included a lot of their own MPs, including two Ministers, and not only are they undermining the wish of the 3 million people living on mainland Europe, but they are continuing to use all 4.5 million as bargaining chips. They do not like to hear that, but the only way they can stop the phrase being true is to stop treating them as bargaining chips and give the unilateral guarantees that the 1.5 million here and the 3 million over there so desperately want to hear.