My Lords, I would have hoped that the noble Baronesses, Lady Ludford and Lady D’Souza, and my noble friends Lady Smith and Lord Judd would not have needed to table this amendment. It should have been self-evident that those living here who arrived with the reasonable expectation of their right to remain on the same terms would have had that guaranteed by the Government.
Sadly, though, it has proved essential that the movers table the amendment since EU residents retain a level of anxiety born not just of the referendum result but of the Government’s subsequent actions. First, at the time of the Article 50 Bill, the Government refused to guarantee their existing rights and chose instead to use them as bargaining chips, as we have heard, using their majority in the Commons to overturn your Lordships’ amendment. Secondly, more than a year later, there is there is still no cast-iron guarantee, despite Ministers promising early agreement on this. Indeed, the Government have failed to implement what the Prime Minister said in December would be on offer to EU citizens, and we therefore need to put it into law. That is a priority for the Bill. We cannot wait until December to give these people certainty. They have decisions to make—on schooling, jobs and homes, and perhaps on marriages and children—and need to know where they stand.
Thirdly, in Committee, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Keen, who is not in his place now, insisted that,
“you can only have the domestic law once you have the international treaty, because it is from the international treaty rights and obligations that you allow the domestic rights and obligations to be brought into our domestic law”.—[Official Report, 7/3/18; cols. 1078-79.]
I do not know if he was deliberately misunderstanding what we were asking but, in effect, he was saying that the withdrawal agreement must come first and that without it the Government would refuse to guarantee existing residents their existing rights. That is not necessary in the treaty. It may be a decision by the
Government but it is certainly not the case in law. We are not asking that the Government wait until we hear from the EU 27 how they will react to our citizens living there. We are asking the Government to affirm now something it is in the UK Parliament’s gift to decide: what rights we will give to EU citizens currently living here legally.
Lastly, we need this because of the disastrous mishandling, which has just been mentioned, of another group of people also living here quite lawfully: the Windrush generation. Given their overwhelming right to be here, the length of time of their residency and the contribution they have made to the economy, is it any wonder that more recent—albeit equally legal—residents, EU citizens, question whether vague promises of concern will harden into legal guarantees?
The amendment is necessary, morally right and legally justified, so I hope that, even at this late hour, the Government will accept it.
11.45 pm