Equality and Social Justice Committee

Hi, good morning. Thanks for having me here. I'm Kezia Tobin. I'm the head of policy and advocacy at the3million, as has already been said.

We are not a direct service provider. We don't provide legal advice at the3million. But what we do do is a lot of grass-roots work with European communities to form links between them and a sense of unity. And the work that we do with grass-roots groups throughout the UK feeds directly into the policy and advocacy work to do with protecting the rights and furthering the rights of EU citizens who've remained in the UK post Brexit, and their family members as well. And we also do work to help those people who are our interested parties—EU citizens and their family members—to understand their rights better. That, I'd say, is it in a nutshell.

Thank you very much, Kezia. Kate, I wondered if you could just tell us what Settle's role is. Is it similar to the3million or very different?

No, I think we are a mirror image, really, of the3million, in that they focus on campaigning and we focus on providing charitable services. We are an advice organisation primarily. We are accredited to Office of the Immigration Services Commissioner level 3. It's the highest level of legal advice. We have volunteers and staff who, between them, speak over 20 languages, European languages. I always say when I'm introducing Settled that we represent Settled, but we're not very representative of Settled because we're both Brits, and most people in Settled are EU citizens themselves, and that means that they build up a lot of trust with the people that they're working with. Rhys is managing our services in Wales so, actually, I'll let Rhys say a bit more about the services that we're providing.

Yes, we provide advice, as Kate mentioned, up to OISC level 3 for free. We provide it via e-mail, phone, social media, telephone, and we also provide face-to-face advice and a number of community outreaches currently based in Newport and Cardiff, but we're looking to expand that to Swansea and Llanelli, and then hopefully at some point up into north Wales as well. We have a small team in Wales, which I lead, and we have a couple of caseworkers who are EU citizens themselves who speak Czech-Slovak and Italian, so we've got a bit of a EU language base in our advice capacity as well. And not only the advice, as we have a focus on merging culture as well with our advice giving and the legal advice that we provide. So, we have a website that we're looking to launch very soon, and that is about celebrating the cultural contributions of EU citizens to Wales and promoting different events across the country. We're also committed to putting on events, hosting different forms of cultural events as well, to go in with our legal advice, because we think the two things are quite important merged together. Yes, I think that's about it.

Okay. Obviously, our major concern is those who haven't applied, or have applied and have obtained pre-settled status, and looking at those who've applied and been successful, the vast majority come from either—. The top three are from Poland, Romania and Bulgaria. These are countries where there's also quite a large Roma contingency and, Kate Smart, you and I met at a meeting with your Romani-speaking member of staff who I believe is based in Luton, or somewhere near there. And I just wondered if you could tell us how that particular community manages to navigate its way around this really complicated issue, given that they may not speak Polish, Romanian or Bulgarian but do speak Romani, or, alternatively, they are reluctant to declare that they are Roma because of the levels of discrimination they've experienced in the country of origin. So, I wonder if you can just tell us a bit about that.

Yes, absolutely. They're definitely a community that we experience as being particularly vulnerable and having multiple different barriers, as you mentioned—the English language possibly not being at a level where they can navigate a complex immigration system, or other systems such as accessing housing benefits, for example, as well. So, we do a lot of work with the Roma community. As you mentioned, we have a Romani-speaking member of staff who is based in Luton, but we can get their support remotely. And also, in Newport, where we do a lot of our face-to-face work, our Czech-Slovak-speaking member of staff does a lot with the Czech-Slovak, or particularly the Slovak Roma, community in Newport.

I think it is a particular issue of trust and I think, without that first-language support, the Roma community can find it very, very difficult to access the support that they need, and having that capacity means that we are quite busy, especially in Newport where we've got that face-to-face, first-language advice and support. It's a huge lifeline for that community, I think, and I think the challenge that we face, I suppose, then is replicating that with the different Roma communities across Wales—like you mentioned, Polish, Romanian as some examples. So, yes, it's something that we're looking at, and we do have volunteers as well. So, we've got a big network of volunteers who speak a range of different languages, and we can call upon their language support as well to help us with those particular cases. But, yes, the Roma community I think, for us, is the most, or certainly the vulnerable category that we do the most support with in Wales.

If I can just add to that, you're right to pick up on the point that, for many of them, it's a community where they've already got their status, or at least got pre-settled status, but that that isn't the end of their problems because unless they know how to use the digital access, then they can't demonstrate their status. And a lot of the problem is that they don't know how to use the digital access, or they're just nervous of going to statutory services and not really able to navigate things easily regardless.

One of the things that we see as a result of that is people relying over-heavily on their children, perhaps because their children speak better English, and then we're worried about the welfare of the children in that situation. But then there are an awful lot of Roma as well who haven't got their status sorted out, and one of the main themes, I think, for us at Settled is we see the EU settlement scheme and the issues that it's thrown up as being a long-term, generation-long issue, where people are continuing to come out of the woodwork who still, even now, didn't know that they needed to apply or have had difficulty applying. And it may well be a generation until the children of the current EU citizens have grown up before we can be assured that everybody who needed to sort out their status has done it, and is able to use the digital scheme to demonstrate it.

Well, that's absolutely clear, given the numbers applying month after month. Anyway, Julie Morgan wants to come in.

Just as Jenny said that there is a huge amount of stigma, basically, about Roma and Roma families, how do you see that has developed or not developed? What comments would you make on that over these last few years? Have you seen any particular trends or any signs of the Roma becoming more integrated or accepted?

It's a difficult one to answer, that, because I think we mainly see the results of—. Whether that's stigma or whether it's just social isolation, the result is the Roma community finding it difficult to access the services that they're entitled to, possibly more so than other groups. So, I guess, in that sense, there probably isn't much of a change or there still exists that stigma or isolation within the community because, quite often, we experience cases where it's not just the EU settlement scheme that's the issue that's been presented; there's an overarching benefit need, or there's a housing issue or there's an education issue that's all tied up with it as well. So, we see a lot of those multifaceted problems in Roma cases, and it's hard to say whether that's possibly more than with other vulnerable groups, but I think that in itself is possibly a sign of it still being quite a significant issue at the moment in Wales.

Yes, very significant. So, you haven't seen any movement there, really.

Not that I can particularly comment on. I'm not sure about you, Kate.

I think it's interesting that you used the word 'stigma', because one of the things that Settled was asked to do by the Welsh Government, a year or two ago, was to run some training courses for statutory service providers, and we got a really positive response from the people who came on those courses, you know, really wanting to do the best job that they could for people. So, we're not getting a sense of stigma and discrimination in terms of statutory providers. I think the biggest problem we're seeing, even now, is a real issue with lack of awareness. That training that we ran was quite time limited. The way that the model was created was that courses had to be run very close together, and we actually see a benefit in there being more regular, less intensive training that's available, if local authorities and so on can pick up on that training, because—and I know Rhys can give a good example of this—we still get a lot of cases coming forward where it's clear that professionals just weren't aware of people's rights and, therefore, there was a muddle about what people's rights are. So, from what we see, it's not so much stigma; it's a lack of awareness.

And I think it was very interesting what you said about the children. Would you say that the children, on the whole, are attending school, at primary and secondary level?

I don't think that's something that we're picking up on. I think there's perhaps more of an issue with parents not fully understanding the requirements of school. So, it's not so much the children aren't going to school, but, if parents don't speak English, it's very, very difficult for them to understand a school letter that's come home or know what to do when there's a parents' evening or things like that. So, I think the more that can be done to help people overcome language barriers and learn English and Welsh, the more that you will break that down, because I think—and again, although we're dealing with EU citizens wide, but focusing on Roma for the moment—one of the problems is how do you break a sense of dependence. So, how do you get to a point where people can sort out things for themselves without needing an advice organisation to go to? And the language barrier is a really big part of that.

May I jump in on this issue?

Yes, please do, Kezia.

Thanks. You've kind of dived straight into one of the groups of people that are struggling the most with the issues that we see with the settlement scheme as a whole, and I think, as Rhys and Kate have already touched on, the lack of digital literacy is a real concern. The current form of digital immigration status that has been rolled out, in the form that it has been rolled out, is really problematic across the board, but it's particularly problematic for people who have poor digital literacy skills, and the Roma community is, of course, one of the key groups that struggle with that. And that's because it's not just a question of being able to access digital immigration status, but because of everything else that flows from that. It has a direct impact on people's ability to access work and to accept benefits, as Rhys has already said. And what we're seeing at the moment is that—because you started by talking about the number of people who've actually been granted pre-settled status, whether their applications have been successful—is a lot of people who are coming up to the point now of the five-year mark, so they're able, at the moment, to apply for an upgrade to settled status, and what we're seeing is that a lot of people who struggled to prove that they were already entitled to settled status when they made their initial EUSS application are struggling at this stage as well. So, there are many people who may well have been in the UK for many, many years and actually ought to have been granted settled status from the off, but, at the point at which they made their initial application, they didn't have enough of a footprint to show that they had been in the UK that long. So, what the Home Office did was they granted them pre-settled status instead, but, of course, at the end of the next five years, those people are having to prove again that they've got that footprint, and they're really struggling. We've seen quite a lot of people who've contacted us to let us know about that. It's particularly relevant when looking at the Roma community, because—. There was a report that was published just in May by Mihai Bica from the Roma Support Group and Owen Parker from the University of Sheffield. I can put a link to that report in the chat—if that's acceptable, if that's possible, I'll do that—because it's a really insightful report that I would really recommend that you take into consideration. And one of things—. I've put it in the—. Oh, sorry, I've only sent it to—. No, I've not sent it to anybody.

Fine. We're interviewing Mihai later on this afternoon.

Are you? Oh, fantastic. Well, there's one statistic from his report that I'd just like to point out, which is that, apparently, when people initially applied to the settlement scheme, around 41 per cent of initial applicants who were non-Roma were granted pre-settled rather than settled status, whereas, for the Roma community, it was 62 per cent who were granted pre-settled rather than settled; it's a real, real difference, and that really, probably, points to the fact that people find it quite hard to evidence their residence in the UK, and I think that's going to become even more of a problem when it comes to upgrades. It's also going to be a problem for people who, further down the line, might find themselves the subject of curtailment action because we know—we don't know very much, but we know—that in the next year or so the Government is going to start curtailing the leave of people who they don't think qualify for settled status, and it's this sort of group of people that are going to find themselves in the most trouble at that point as well, and it's really important that they have access to legal advice, and we don't think there's enough legal advice. Luckily, we've got Settled in Wales, but there simply isn't enough advice for the number of people who are going to be affected by these issues.

Thank you for summarising that. Can I bring in Jane Dodds?

Dwi am ofyn cwestiynau'n Gymraeg, felly jest i sicrhau—. Dwi am ofyn cwestiynau'n Gymraeg, jest i sicrhau bod gennych chi'r cyfieithiad. Yn gyntaf, gaf i jest ofyn cwestiwn ychwanegol? Sut mae pobl yn gwybod am beth rydych chi'n ei wneud? Sut maen nhw'n cael yr wybodaeth eich bod chi'n gallu eu helpu nhw? Gaf i jest ofyn i Settled yn gyntaf ac wedyn dod ymlaen i the3million?

Yes, of course. So, obviously we do a lot of work with partner organisations and other services that may come into contact with people who might need support with the EU settlement scheme, so we do a lot of stakeholder engagement to try and spread the word of the issues that are still impacting people to do with the EU settlement scheme. We do have a slight comms budget, so we do engage with social media, advertising; we try and get printed publications distributed as much as possible, but I guess it's a good question because I think we can definitely do more, and what we could maybe do with a bit of help with is doing a bit more of engagement and spreading awareness on these issues. As Kate mentioned, awareness is probably one of the biggest problems that we're facing in Wales, I think, for numerous reasons. Services—maybe historically Wales is not great; immigration advice provision has led to a kind of sense of, or just lack of awareness that these issues exist within statutory services and also within third sector organisations that don't particularly deal with migration issues on a daily basis. There's a lack of confidence, I think, across the two sectors with regard to migration issues in particular.

So, raising awareness is critical, and I think, if we can get maybe one thing out of today in terms of support from the committee and also Welsh Government, it's around raising awareness to people on the continued issues that exist. A few have been mentioned today, such as going from pre-settled to settled status and the challenges that people are going to encounter doing that if they don't have sufficient evidence of continuous residency in the UK. There are quite a few more with regard to late applications. You can still make a late application, but the process for doing that has been significantly tightened over recent months, and it's much harder now to make a late application that will be accepted as valid, and the knock-on effect of that is you don't receive a certificate of application. Your rights are not protected until you submit a valid late application, so you need, or we feel at Settled that people need, support to do that if there are people without status, and there will be still in Wales, and often they're people in some of the most vulnerable situations, and we encounter them—. They'll come out of the woodwork, so to speak, in a kind of crisis situation. That's when we'll encounter them, and obviously it's from our point of view better to approach this kind of issue preventatively, and that comes with raising awareness and that comes with engagement, so it's a huge focus for us. We're doing what we can, for sure, but I think there's much more we can do with that.

Diolch yn fawr iawn. Kezia, ydych chi eisiau jest dweud sut mae pobl yn gwybod amdanoch chi?

Thank you. Yes, I think, as organisations go, and for the size of organisation that we are, we're fairly well known within the sector, and we're in regular contact with colleagues in other organisations that are working in the sector. We have a lot of community outreach work that our community organisers do. But of course we're also very aware that, in fact, the most vulnerable people are likely to be the people who are not in touch with the advisers who we're in touch with, and who are not part of the big community groups that our outreach team are engaging with either, and because most of what we do relies on people reporting their concerns to us through a 'report it' function on our website, we're also conscious that, really, the problems that we're finding out about are probably just the tip of the iceberg, because, much as we like to think that everyone knows who we are, the reality is, of course, that most people won't know who we are, and most people won't know to report their concerns to us.

Diolch yn fawr iawn. Dwi eisiau cyffwrdd â hynny, os gwelwch yn dda, hefyd—hynny yw, pobl sy'n agored i niwed—a hefyd jest cyffwrdd â phynciau ychwanegol, fel iechyd ac addysg. Gaf i ofyn, ar y ddau beth yna, beth ydy eich profiad chi? Ydy'r rheini'n dod i chi fel mudiad yn fwy aml rŵan—pobl sy'n agored i niwed, a hefyd y pynciau ychwanegol mae pobl yn dod â nhw i chi, fel addysg ac iechyd? Beth ydy eich profiad chi fel mudiad? Gaf i ofyn, efallai, i Kezia yn gyntaf—beth ydy eich profiad chi? Diolch.

Thanks. Yes, we are seeing a lot of issues. There are some—. I don't know, necessarily, that we're seeing more of them now than we have over the last couple of years, but there are certainly very prevalent concerns that are at the forefront of people's priorities.

One of the key issues is a lack of access to welfare support for people with pre-settled status. The Government has adopted a perspective on withdrawal agreement beneficiaries that distinguishes between what they deem the 'true' cohort of withdrawal agreement beneficiaries, and then what they label as the 'extra' cohort of withdrawal agreement beneficiaries, who are people who weren't here exercising treaty rights under the old EU law framework, before the cut-off point. That has a real significance when it comes to accessing welfare support. So, although the Government says that everybody's EUSS status says it's issued under the withdrawal agreement and the official position is that people aren't treated any differently, regardless of whether they are true or extra cohort, the reality is quite different, because, at the point at which somebody comes to make an application for universal credit, for example, they, as a pre-settled status holder, are required to demonstrate they have an additional right to reside. Simply having their status isn't enough. And then, their entitlement under the old EU law framework of free movement law comes into play.

So, what we're seeing is that people who have pre-settled status have no idea, actually, whether the Government deems them to be true or extra cohort until the point at which they need support. And, at that point, the most vulnerable people, again, are the ones that really struggle to show that they were exercising treaty rights all those years ago. And there are many people who may be eligible who fall through the gap, and people who weren't exercising those rights of course also find themselves in a very, very difficult situation, and we've seen that it pushes people into destitution. It also pushes a lot of cost onto local authorities, because then they're having to deal with emergency accommodation and support for people facing homelessness. And that's something that we haven't seen any real change in the Government position on.

There's some ongoing litigation that we're also involved in, actually, on that point. But, in terms of healthcare and education, there are two other points that I'd like to mention briefly. One is in terms of NHS charges that people can face. So, Rhys talked a few minutes ago about the difficulties that people now face in making successful late application to the scheme. Of course, late applications are still permitted, but an applicant now has to show that they've got a reasonable basis for having missed the deadline. Why that is significant when we're looking at NHS charging is because, if someone incurs treatment on the NHS between the point at which their deadline passed and the date on which they made their late application, even after their application has been successful—so, it's accepted that they've had a reasonable excuse for making their late application, they're granted status—they are then still faced with the bills for those NHS charges that were incurred in their treatment between those two dates, their deadline and the point at which they made their application. And often, these are fees that are not, in reality, recoverable, particularly if you're looking at vulnerable people, and yet the debt remains for those individuals, and it's hugely burdensome and hugely problematic. And, in our view, at the3million, we can't see how making people pay those charges is really compatible with the UK's obligations under the withdrawal agreement, because, of course, if they've been granted status, the implication is that it's accepted that they were here on withdrawal agreement terms.

So, that's one way in which people's health is affected. And, again, it's the most vulnerable, usually because we're finding that, as Kate said, it's the people coming out of the woodwork now, often people who are quite isolated, who are quite vulnerable, who didn't realise that they needed to make that initial application earlier on. It's often, for example, old people who have been in the UK decades who then are hospitalised and, at that point, are told that they need to make an application.

Okay. So, Kezia, just on this point, the Welsh Government has proactively contacted all of our health boards and has found that nobody from Wales has been charged in this way. So, obviously, that's an issue in England, but, as far as we're aware, it's not an issue in Wales.

Well, that's very encouraging to hear. As long as, of course, it's because they wouldn't be charged and not because there simply haven't been any—. I hope that that continues is all I'd say on that.

And then just my last point, on the education point, I don't have very much information about schools, education in primary and secondary schools. Perhaps Rhys and Kate have more to say on that. But what I would say is that we've seen a lot of problems for university students. We've seen issues with university students being charged overseas fees when they should have been charged home fees, and we've also seen students facing difficulties with right to rent checks, which has meant that they've not been able to take up university places in cities other than the ones that they live in. We had an example of a family who are living somewhere in south Wales—I can't remember exactly where it was, I'm afraid—where the daughter of the family was not able to attend university in England because she wasn't able to obtain a tenancy agreement and it was too much of a commute for her.

Diolch yn fawr iawn. A gaf i jest ofyn i Settled os oes yna rywbeth ychwanegol i chi ynglŷn â phobl sy'n agored i niwed neu bynciau ychwanegol rydych chi'n clywed amdanynt?

If I could just add on the access to housing and welfare point, I think something that was alluded to earlier, but probably fits here, is that it can impact both vulnerable people and not vulnerable people. It's what Kezia was talking about with regard to people with pre-settled status struggling to then demonstrate an additional right to reside, which would then give them entitlement to public funds, which is benefits and also local authority housing support. We have found that there's a lack of understanding within local authorities, particularly, around these rules. There are varying degrees of understanding around what to do when someone walks through the door looking for housing support who has pre-settled status.

We have seen examples of where the decisions within those cases have gone awry. We also have a particular example—I won't name the local authority, of course—where the local authority is relying upon Settled as an organisation to almost consult on these decisions. These are housing decisions, and the local authority in these cases is the decision maker. It's possibly an indicator of a lack of in-house support or just general training within local authorities on how to deal with these issues.

I think that that's something that's a significant thing, and maybe unique to Wales as well—or maybe not unique, but possibly more heightened in Wales—considering we have a dispersed migrant population and some local authorities will be much less familiar with these cases if there just aren't that many people within their constituency who are migrants, I suppose. That's definitely an issue for vulnerable people, but also people who wouldn't really fit into those vulnerability categories but by virtue of being a pre-settled status-holder are almost a little bit vulnerable in that sense, because they don't have the same entitlement to public funds as someone with settled status or a British citizen.

On the second point on late applications, I think vulnerability, at this point, so far from the deadline for the EU settlement scheme—. With regard to late applications, almost all the cases that you've got left are vulnerable cases, by nature of it being so far away. Various different circumstances have led to the application not being made until this point, and often that is different types of vulnerability. We don't see a lot of simple late applications any more, and that case will be complex for one of a variety of reasons.

To add onto that, we still do see cases of people who you wouldn't necessarily class as vulnerable or fit into these vulnerability categories but who have been in the UK or been in Wales for 20 or 30 years, and basically thought that it just didn't apply. They've got indefinite leave to remain, and the sense is, 'None of this should apply to me, because my status is secure', which I think is an understandable sentiment, but also something that again speaks to possibly a bit of a lack of awareness. We see both, basically. Their status, then, without having status, means that they're by nature in a vulnerability category, because they don't have access to any associated rights.

Diolch yn fawr iawn, Cadeirydd.

There are two things arising from that. I wonder if you could write to us about specific local authorities where there's a lack of awareness of what the rules are, and we can investigate that further. And secondly, I wanted to ask specifically about older people, because in terms of the numbers of applications in Wales, only 3 per cent were over 65, and given the upheavals that took place before, during and after the second world war, I wondered whether there are people out there who are still not aware of their need to apply, given that they may be quite elderly at this stage.

Definitely. For sure, we'd like to speak to you with regard to the local authority example that I mentioned. But 100 per cent, there'll be people out there of a certain generation that have not yet made any application to the scheme, and then will struggle, in all honesty, to make a valid late application, because the Home Office's response is that just not knowing about it by itself is not enough to warrant a reasonable ground for a late application. So, there would need to be something else. Obviously, it's case by case, but there would need to be something else within that application to make it valid.

Thank you. Can I bring in Sioned Williams?

Diolch, Cadeirydd. Allaf i ofyn ichi sut ŷch chi'n cael eich ariannu ac ydych chi'n derbyn unrhyw gyllid gan Lywodraeth Cymru neu Lywodraeth y Deyrnas Gyfunol? Roedd diddordeb gyda fi yn benodol ynglŷn â'r cyrsiau yna wnaethoch chi sôn amdanyn nhw gynnau—dwi'n meddwl gwnaeth Kate sôn amdanyn nhw—a beth mae Rhys newydd ei grybwyll, sef y rôl ymgynghorol yma rŷch chi'n ffeindio eich hun yn ei chwarae. Felly, pwy sy'n eich ariannu chi?

I'll take that one. We've been funded by the Welsh Government since the beginning, really, since the settlement scheme was announced in 2019, and we're extremely grateful for that support. The Welsh Government has been one of Settled's most loyal funders all the way through and continues to be, and we are really very grateful. This year, we have had £100,000 from the Welsh Government, and it was the same last year, and last year it went up quite significantly from what it had been previously. That work is covering advice and outreach and a bit of management. It's not covering our office—it doesn't pay for any office costs. It doesn't pay for any communications work. We have, last year, secured funding from the Home Office for the first time, so we are now the Home Office provider of advice in Wales as well. We're based in Wales, but we're UK wide, so we have some funding from the Scottish Government for providing higher level legal advice in Scotland, and then all of our other funding is from just charitable fundraising from trusts and grants and foundations, as most charities do.

Your other point was about the training courses. The Welsh Government—it was a couple of years ago now—approached us and asked if we wanted to tender for a very intensive period of running training courses for local authorities, which we did. And then, the second year, they asked us if we wanted to redo it, and we said no, because even though we'd done all the prep for year one—it's always hardest to do it in year one, isn't it—and although it was a good experience for us and we were glad to do it, and we got very good feedback from the people on the courses, it was just too intensive in terms of the impact on us for the funding and the fact that the timescale was very squeezed to run so many courses in a tight timescale. We definitely see a need for training in local authorities, but I think something that could be paced so that it's something that maybe local authorities could dip in and out of longer term, rather than saying, 'We've got some funding, please can you run it now?' would be really helpful.

Ie, wrth gwrs. Kezia, ŷch chi'n moyn sôn am eich cyllid chi?

Because we're not an advice provider, we're not eligible for the pots of Government funding for advice organisations, of course, so we're entirely funded by grants and charitable trusts. We're not a registered charity at the moment, but we're funded by trusts and grants and public donations. And then, for some specific bits of strategic legal work, strategic interventions and that sort of thing, we sometimes turn to CrowdJustice funding as well.

Diolch. Yn amlwg, mae Settled yn derbyn arian sylweddol gan Lywodraeth Cymru. Allaf i ofyn i chi sut ŷch chi'n gweithio gyda Llywodraeth Cymru a Llywodraeth y Deyrnas Gyfunol y tu hwnt i'r tendro penodol yna ar gyfer rhedeg prosiectau penodol? Sut ŷch chi'n gweithio gyda Llywodraeth Cymru o ran adnabod y math o waith y maen nhw eisiau i chi fod yn ei wneud ar gyfer y cyllid rŷch chi'n ei dderbyn? Ydy hynny wedi newid o gwbl, dros amser, o ran eich perthynas neu'ch ymwneud gyda Llywodraeth Cymru neu/a Llywodraeth y Deyrnas Gyfunol?

Shall I make a start? We've got a bit of a tag team going on here. We have quite close connections with our grant managers at the Welsh Government and have had throughout. We have quarterly meetings, for example, and sometimes a little bit of meetings in between. There's always been a standing forum that the Welsh Government was running around EU citizen issues and the EU settlement scheme, and we attend those meetings as much as possible.

One of the challenges is that, of course, interest dips in these kinds of issues, so my sense of it is—and this is just a bit anecdotal—that those meetings used to maybe have a bit of a higher status and be a bit better attended than they are now. In some of those meetings that I attended, going back a few years, actually they were an incredibly important way of holding the Home Office to account, because the Home Office would come to those meetings. And, in fact, you could get a better dialogue with the Home Office in those meetings that were hosted by the Welsh Government than some of the other forums that are happening UK wide, because there was no escape for the Home Office in those meetings. But if the Home Office don't come anymore, then obviously those meetings are less influential.

We've participated in consultations and there was an integration framework development process of meetings that I was part of. And, really, anything that the Welsh Government is organising, if they ask us to be part of it, then we're very happy to be there. I think one of the real strengths of Settled is that it's operating right across the spectrum of society, so we have a lot of grass-roots links with communities, working in all different languages, but also we're really well respected and have a lot of contact with the EU delegation, so we're probably talking to the EU delegation about once a week and meeting with them about once a month. And we also meet with a lot of the different embassies of member states, quite often. And so, being a bit of a bridge between the Welsh Government and the EU delegation and helping with that glue is really helpful, I think.

Similarly, with the Home Office, Settled is probably speaking to the Home Office every day about cases, and that relationship with the Home Office has been long-standing since 2019, but is closer now because we are their grant-funded organisation for Wales. And similarly, if we can, we're very keen to be helpful in terms of helping the Welsh Government to talk to the Home Office, if that's needed. So, yes, we're very grateful for the support that we get, and where we can help to build those bridges, because this is our day job and we do it all the time, we're very keen to do it.

Oes yna unrhyw beth o ran y berthynas yna, neu o ran y cyllid rŷch chi'n ei dderbyn, y byddech chi'n hoffi gweld yn gwella? Oes yna unrhyw wendidau rŷch chi wedi eu hadnabod yn y berthynas yna, neu o ran y cyllid?

Given the opportunity, we'd always be happy to receive more funding if there was some available. The funding that we're having at the moment is sufficient to provide the advice service at the level that we're providing it, but there is clearly more that we could be doing. As I said, we're running a very small office in Wales at the moment. I think there's potentially capacity for having a much more prominent centre for EU citizens in Wales; there isn't really anywhere that is a focal point that people can go to in terms of getting advice, but also perhaps as a place to celebrate different cultures and a sense of Wales's affiliation to Europe. So, there's potential there.

One of the points that came out in your report was possibly a bit of frustration in the relationship with the Home Office. I think our relationship with the Welsh Government is really very good, and we're very grateful to our grant managers. I think there are possibly improvements that could be made in the relationship between the Welsh Government and the Home Office in terms of having more influence over the Home Office, and if we can help with that, we'd be glad to.

Diolch. Kezia, ydych chi'n moyn cyfrannu at hwnna?

Thank you. I just wanted to come back on one point actually, because when Kate mentioned working with the EU delegation, I realised that I'd left the EU Commission out when I was answering the question about how we're funded. We've also, in the last year, had a grant from the European Commission that goes towards a community-based project that we have in three parts of the UK, not including Wales, and that's ring-fenced for that project.

Okay. Julie, you wanted to come in.

Just quickly. I wanted to ask more about your relationship with the Home Office. Do you see yourselves as being advocates for people in Wales, for example, to the Home Office, and does being funded by the Home Office cause any issues for you in terms of independence?

I think I wouldn't go around being rude about the Home Office without having good reason to—that's how I interpret our responsibilities in terms of being funded by them. I think being funded by the Home Office has strengthened significantly our ability to speak truth to power. We have many more meetings with them. They listen to us. They want to listen to us. They are very happy for us to raise all sorts of concerns with them, and we meet with them now regularly enough that we can push them on points, if we think that they haven't acted on them. So, I think, far from having made it harder for us to raise issues and have an influence, I think it's really increased it.

Thank you.

Very good. Could I briefly ask both of you what your relationship is with the UK Independent Monitoring Authority for the Citizens Rights Agreements, which we have good relations with? Obviously, that is the official body, established under the withdrawal agreement, to protect the rights of EU and EFTA citizens, and their family members. So, how do you—? What relationship do you have with them? Can I go to Kezia first, and then I'll come back to Settled?

Sure. We have a fairly close working relationship with the IMA as well, in that there's a team there that we meet with on a very regular basis, and who we have a good working relationship with. I think the IMA has done some very positive work, most notably perhaps in taking the Government to court in the judicial review of 2022, which we intervened in and which resulted in some very positive decisions from the court. We've got concerns about how the Government is giving effect to that judgment still, but that's, of course, no criticism of the IMA. So, there's some very positive work that's been done.

I think I would say that we've been disappointed more recently to see that the IMA is taking a fairly narrow view about who are withdrawal agreement beneficiaries, and the interpretation of the withdrawal agreement with regard to pre-settled status holders. We're involved in some of the strategic litigation that I mentioned earlier, where we found ourselves on opposite sides to the IMA, which has been quite frustrating.

I think I would say that, institutionally, they tend to be—or it tends to be—very cautious in a way that we've found a little bit frustrating. One example of that would be the fact that we've sought for a very long time to persuade the IMA to investigate the roll-out of digital immigration status, and, for a long time, the IMA was wary of taking issue with the digital roll-out, because the withdrawal agreement stipulates that status can be issued in the form of a digital document. Thankfully, having seen a lot of evidence of the ways in which the current form of digital status is problematic, the IMA is changing its view on that, but it has taken a lot of work, and that, I would say, is frustrating.

Okay. Thank you. Kate.

As Kezia said, the big win for the IMA has been the court case where they challenged the Home Office on the pre-settled status. That's a really significant piece of work that we're all very grateful for. I think, that aside, part of the challenge is that the IMA is reliant on people complaining and collecting evidence from complaints, and Settled is extremely busy. So, UK wide, we're getting 200 inquiries a week from people with concerns about their situation, but the number of those people who, having come to us and we've resolved their case, then want to go and tell the IMA about it is minuscule, really. People can't be bothered to go and tell the IMA about their problems because they know that the IMA is not immediately going to resolve them. And therefore, inevitably, the IMA is under-representing the scale of problems. So, when the IMA then talks to the Home Office, they'll say, 'Well, we've had hardly anybody contact us this month', whereas of course what Settled is seeing is hundreds of people contacting us. So, I think that is a problem.

One of the conversations that we've been trying to have recently with the IMA—and I'm meeting with their chief exec next week—is they set the—. And I think this is Kezia's point really. They're cautious, and they set the evidence bar high. So, you know, even if they get some complaints about an issue, they say, 'Well, we haven't really had enough people come to tell us about this point for us to feel that we can do something about it.'

And the point we want to make to them is that, actually—and this is picking up on what Julie was saying—the Home Office are reasonably receptive. I don't think the Home Office want to have any problems around EU citizens' issues. I think the Home Office see the EU settlement scheme as a very good news story for the Home Office. They don't really want there to be problems. Therefore, the Home Office are quite receptive when you point out a problem to them to try and fix it generally. And the IMA could be a bit more proactive, I think, in raising issues even when they haven't been given a mass of examples, and say, 'Well, look, we've heard a few examples, and that's sufficient for us to raise it with the Home Office.' And I think they could go a bit further down that road.

Okay, thank you very much. Carolyn Thomas.

May I just add something—?

Quickly, because we're going to run out of time otherwise.

Oh, we're going to run out of time. I would absolutely second everything that Kate's just said. And just on the point about the number of people who report to them, I'd also just add that their website is very user-unfriendly. And so it says 'report a complaint', and that's the avenue through which citizens are invited to complain about the implementation of their rights, but it could be very well interpreted as reporting a complaint about the IMA. And it's a fairly onerous application form that a person has to fill in. It's certainly not one that invites people readily to make complaints to them.

Thank you for those comments. We'll take them up elsewhere.

Can I clarify that earlier you said you don't operate in north Wales at the moment? Is that what you said?

We operate nationally, but we don't have a caseworker who's based in north Wales currently at the moment, yes.

But you do offer advice in north Wales.

Of course, yes.

Okay. So, what more can be done to support European citizens in Wales?

I think, firstly, having a stronger presence in north Wales would be a really key aspect, because we know that there's a large Polish community, there's a large Bulgarian community in Wrexham and Flintshire. They particularly are counties with a large EU community in them, and I think we've got links there, but we don't have a physical presence. And for a team that's all based in south Wales, logistically it is more difficult. Face-to-face support is 100 per cent needed, and we need people on the ground, working in communities to deliver that advice, especially when you're working with vulnerable customers, the Roma community, et cetera—that face-to-face support is vital. So, for what more can be done, getting a presence in north Wales, whether that be a staff member or a centre, for example, that would be, I think, significant.

More generally, though, I think, when we're looking at what can be done for EU citizens in Wales, I think a lot of this could be potentially solved with data. And, specifically, people who've got pre-settled status at the moment who will need to go to settled status at some point, the Home Office and the UK Government have data on all of those people, and especially all of the ones in Wales. It is something that we've raised before to the Home Office directly, but I think it's something that maybe we could push for a bit more, and maybe the Welsh Government could support us in doing that, in sharing that data somehow, or at least in communications to those pre-settled status holders in Wales, who have reached the point of their pre-settled status technically expiring, but also then being extended. They are a cohort of people who will need to make an application for settled status, and they're a cohort of people that the Home Office could directly contact and tell them exactly what is available in terms of support in Wales for them, i.e. Settled. Also, I must mention Tros Gynnal Plant, who we're in a partnership with for the Home Office project. So, that is the free advice that's available in Wales, and I think things could be done more there to direct people to the support that is available.

Have you got anything to add?

Some of the things we've mentioned already, really. I think if there was more awareness and training for professionals, then the environment in which EU citizens are operating would be easier. Literacy and other support towards independence for Roma. I think something around children specifically. Like I said, this is a generation-long issue that we're dealing with and there isn't anything that is really child-specific, and something that would help around that, I think, would make a big difference.

Regarding training and support for professionals, what about training and support for politicians to raise awareness? So, when you work with local authorities, do you do that also through the Welsh Local Government Association, and how do you get that political understanding as well for community cohesion? Your thoughts on that.

Yes, so I think the community cohesion network is a team that we have worked with, but it's something I think we could utilise better, and I think we could utilise their links, and obviously the WLGA as well, as Kate mentioned, to maybe explore this repeated training concept, where the training isn't just short and sharp and delivered on a one-off basis, but is there repeatedly for people who need it or feel like it's available. I think that would be very beneficial, yes.

Okay, thank you. And Kezia, do you want to add anything?

Thank you. We don't do as much direct work on the ground in Wales as we'd like to, actually, either, but I do think that having more face-to-face support available, I absolutely agree that that's key. And also, on the point about awareness and training for professionals, what I would say is that in Scotland, the Scottish Government has set up a forum for those who are involved in advice provision or have some involvement with the EUSS cohort in Scotland, and they organise round-table meetings, not that often, but now and again. We go along to those meetings and it's very helpful to just make sure that everybody who is working in the sector is on the same page and is in contact with each other. It might be that that's something that would be very helpful for the Welsh Government to set up as well.

And then just one final point that I would add, in terms of how Welsh Government could help support and bring the issues that are affecting EU citizens in Wales to Westminster, would be to repeat what was done a couple of years ago. There were a couple of joint letters that were produced by, I think, the Scottish Government and I think all of the devolved Governments, actually, Northern Irish, Scottish and Welsh, specifically raising concerns about access to digital immigration status. I think there was letter that was sent to an immigration Minister in September, and then a follow-up letter in December 2021. And I would say that it would be very helpful to have a similar sort of letter from the Welsh Government when we have a new Government in Westminster as well.

And do you have a view on the changes made to the EU settled status since July 2023?

Yes, many. [Laughter.] I'm conscious that we don't have a lot of time.

Can I just interrupt? So, would it be possible to extend the session by 10 minutes, so that we can just complete our—? Is that okay with you, Kezia, as well as our two participants in the room? Thank you. Okay. We'll go back to you, Kezia.

So, when you say any concerns or views on the changes, do you mean as a whole or with a view to—? In general, do you mean?

Yes, in general, and yes. So, it's a view on the changes made to the EU settled status since July 2023. So, your thoughts on that.

There were several changes that were brought in that we've already touched on that have caused people a lot of uncertainty, not least one of the issues was this change to the late applications process that has made it a lot more difficult for people, as Rhys said earlier, to meet the evidential threshold that's required of them to actually make a successful application. And what's important to have in mind is that people who make a late application, whose reasons for doing so are not deemed good enough, don't have a right of appeal or a right of administrative review against those decisions because they're not immigration decisions; they're just rejected applications. And so, you find that people who are making those applications without legal advice are simply being rejected without any recourse to review. So, that goes, again, to the real need for legal advice not at a basic level, but at a more complex level, because, as I think Rhys said earlier, almost all late applications now are complex applications by their very nature. So, that was one of the changes that was introduced that has been, and continues to be, really quite problematic for a lot of people. In amongst those changes in July of last year there was also a decision taken to take away the right of administrative review overall for people applying. So, even people who've had their applications accepted now don't have a right of administrative review; they only have a right of appeal, which is also quite limiting.

There's another issue that was brought in at that time as well, which has momentarily slipped my mind, and that I wanted to raise, so maybe if I hand over to Rhys and Kate, and if it comes back to me, I can jump in again.

Yes, okay. Well, there is the elephant in the room over the pre-settled status and the automatic transfer into settled status. I wonder if you can address that, because that seems to be really crucial.

Sorry, I didn't quite hear what you said.

Well, the High Court ruling that said that those with pre-settled status should automatically get settled status at the end of two years, and where that leaves these individuals.

Yes. So, the High Court ruling was clear that there shouldn't really be that distinction, that people should really just roll over into settled status, and the Home Office is very resistant to agreeing to that, possibly, and I've heard people discussing this and suggesting that it's because getting pre-settled status was relatively easy, and therefore the Home Office wants to build in some checks and balances later down the line. So, the Home Office's response has been that they will allow some cases to be automatically transferred, if they've got the data in HMRC records and so on, and then otherwise, people are now—. Well, initially, they were given an extra two years, and now they're going to be given an extra five years, extending the time of their pre-settled status in order that they can then apply for settled status later on. One of the difficulties that this is going to cause is there's a lot of uncertainty about where this leaves people in terms of the amount of time that they're allowed out of the UK. So, pre-settled status came with a condition that you could only have a certain amount of time out of the UK if you wanted to go on and get settled status at the end of it. And, by saying to people that you've got two years or five years now to make that case, they've not changed that rule about how long you can be out of the UK. And as one of our trustees, who's Italian, said, 'It's kind of like locking people in the UK, isn't it?'—that, actually, the risk is that people will continue to live here, and they might have broken the condition for how long you have out of the UK and, therefore, they still won't qualify. So, it's a muddle.

The other side of it is that people with pre-settled status as a result of all of these changes have been sent a letter. They've all been sent a letter and, because the whole thing is so convoluted, that letter is incredibly long and legal, and organisations like Settled are now being inundated with people saying, 'I've got this letter and I don't understand it.' So, we've got some people saying, 'I've got this letter and I think it means I don't need to apply for anything anymore.' We've got some people saying, 'I've got this letter and I think it tells me I've got to leave the country now', and all sorts of things in between. We've said this to the Home Office and they said, 'Well, the situation is so complicated we had to put all of the scenarios in the letter to cover ourselves legally.' You can see why they would say that, but it is causing a lot of confusion. So, they're kicking the can down the road. Who knows? There may well be further changes. With a new Government coming in, there may well be further changes to it, but that's the situation at the moment.

Thank you. Julie Morgan.

Yes, thank you. What is your view on the future of the EUSS?

Well, I think the important thing is that it doesn't go off the agenda entirely. I think there's a real feeling that this is job done now—that most people have gone through this process. There's a perception, particularly, as we were saying earlier, that the IMA doesn't get an awful lot of complaints. A lot of EU citizens—. People will know EU citizens whose lives have just gone back to normal, really, to some extent. So, the real worry is that it just begins to feel like job done, and, as we've been saying, one of the real takeaways, hopefully, from this session is that we think that there is going to be a generation's worth of scrutiny needed to make sure that everybody's rights are safeguarded, because we don't know—none of us know—how many people haven't applied or will fall foul of the pre-settled to settled status rule, or have got their status but can't use the digital system. We just wait. You just need organisations like Settled to be there so that, when problems arise, there is somewhere for people to go, because we find that the Home Office is pretty receptive, and if there is a trusted intermediary who can say, 'Look, Mr A or Mr B or Mrs B has this problem—can you sort it out?', the Home Office is receptive to that. But without that intermediary, people will struggle, and people are continuing to come out of the woodwork. We don't really know what the future holds, but I think the need for advice agencies for a generation is really important.

Thank you.

Okay. That leads us neatly into Joel James's questions.

Thank you, Chair, and thanks ever so much for coming in this afternoon. I just wanted to know a bit more, then—I've got a couple of questions, if we've got time—about what role you see the Senedd or even this committee playing in all of this, if that makes sense.

If I go first—thank you for your question—the biggest thing, which I think we've mentioned a few times, is around awareness and around utilising what kind of levers or resources the committee and also the Welsh Government have to promote and encourage participation in training, to look at what training can be provided, in terms of, maybe, commissioning or contracting training that we've previously provided out, again, and looking at a different model of that, possibly, for it being a bit more long term. Yes, general awareness raising, general promotion of the issues.

And one point I wanted to bring up before, around funding, is around the need for sustainable, more-than-annual funding programmes. We understand that the Welsh Government was working within an annual budget, which is why I think our funding comes agreed annually, and the process for our grant as well is a joy, actually. It's a very easy process. The Welsh Government are very receptive to talking to us about what we—. It's a dialogue process for what we're providing for our grant, but it is still annual, and it makes it difficult to plan long term. It makes it difficult to get something going, and then things can take half a year to get off the ground, really, and then you're looking at winding it down, or potentially winding it down, if there isn't a continuation of funding. So, definitely longer funding periods, if that can be something that can be encouraged or even discussed, and how that looks, and general awareness raising, would be the two points from my view. I don't know if you've got anything else, Kate.

Yes, I had two things and am I going to remember what they are? Well, I think one of them is that EU citizens now are located within the wider policy framework of migration, and that is helpful in some senses, in that you can build strong alliances within that sector, but, for a lot of EU citizens, they feel really uncomfortable at suddenly being thought of as migrants, because they never really had to think of themselves as migrants before. And I think what's very helpful about the area that this committee speaks to is that you can place EU citizens within a framework of equality and justice and culture and integration, and so pulling on different areas of policy, and the work around future generations. These are all areas where I think it's helpful to connect with the experience of EU citizens. And then I think the second thing is to work on that relationship with the Home Office, because I do think the Welsh Government's capacity to influence the Home Office could be—. There is more potential there, depending on how much resource is invested and time is invested in that relationship, but I think the Welsh Government has got perhaps more clout with the Home Office than it realises and maybe it isn't making as much use of that as it could.

Okay. Kezia, do you want to come in?

Thank you. If I can just come in on that other point—I'm conscious of time; I'll be quick—that I had forgotten, which was indeed about this issue of the two-year extension being granted to pre-settled status holders, and I think it's really important to emphasise that it's not the case that, at the end of that two-year extension, somebody rolls over into settled status. What the Government has said is, as Kate said, that they've kicked the can down the road. They've extended pre-settled status but they've not given any certainty to people about what will happen at the end of that. Recently, they've said they're going to start extending it not for two years, but for five years. But, again, there's no clarity at all for people about what happens at the end of that five-year period, particularly for people who are struggling to evidence the fact that they've got this continuous residence, which means they'll be eligible for 'settled'. So, what happens to those people?

There is also a lot of confusion for people who might have already got the two-year extension now that the five-year one has been extended. It's not clear whether their two years will be converted to five or not. So, there's a real lack of clarity. And it's true, of course, that it was relatively straightforward to apply for pre-settled status when the scheme opened. But that was a decision that the Government chose to take, because they had adopted this constitutive scheme, and so, for administrative reasons, of course, it was much easier to simply require a proof of straight residence rather than anything beyond that. But now they're really raising the bar to try and, it would seem, exclude as many people as possible, to be frank, because it's clearly not being rolled out and designed to be a straightforward process because of this shifting, raising the bar, and evidential threshold that people are having to meet. It's very difficult for people, particularly because those people who are affected are the ones that, of course, have already got their lives here, that they are established here now. So, in terms of the future of the EUSS, I would say one of the key things that we need is more certainty and clarity from the Government about what really is going to happen to people further down the line. And it's not the case that applications are drying up, because even in the last quarter the Home Office statistics show that there were 174,000 applications to the scheme. That just goes to show how very much this is not an issue that is going to go away quickly.

And in terms of the very last question, about what the Senedd could do, I would just reiterate what I said earlier about how helpful I think it is to have letters from the Senedd and other devolved Governments to central Government, highlighting the key issues of concern, which are the ones that we've all set out in this session.

I'd like to thank all of you for the clarity of your evidence. It provides some clarity as to what we need to do to prevent this turning into yet another Windrush scandal, which would just cause huge untold agony, as well as a lot of cost. So, thank you very much.

You will all be sent a transcript of what you've said, so please just check that we've captured your evidence correctly. The committee will now take a break until 1.30 p.m., when we will resume with our second session on EU settlement status.