Labour’s Shadow Brexit Secretary has said that EU nationals living in the UK should enjoy greater rights than their British neighbours.
Sir Keir Starmer told the BBC’s Today Programme that the controversial £18,600 income threshold for visas for foreign spouses that is currently applied to Brits should not be applied to EU nationals living in the UK after Brexit, which would hand British based EU nationals greater rights than UK citizens.
Sir Keir, the former Director of Public Prosecutions, also indicated that a compromise would have to be found, through which European courts, not UK ones, could preside over the rights of EU nationals in the UK after Brexit.
Theresa May published her offer for EU nationals yesterday, which said they would have to have been in the UK for five years to achieve "settled status’ – giving them full access to schools, hospitals, pensions and benefits. The Prime Minister stressed that ‘no families would be split up’ but did stress that if relatives arrive after Britain’s departure there will be strict curbs, and that the £18,600 threshold would apply.
Sir Keir said EU nationals "should not suffer as a result of Brexit and therefore the exact same rights should be available to them in future."
"At the moment EU citizens in this country can bring in a spouse or a family member without any financial threshold," he said.
Sir Keir also said that whatever agreement was reached between the UK and the EU would have to be controlled by some kind of "external body" as the UK parliament could, having made an agreement with the EU, simple change the law later.
“It has to be a court-like body that is external,” he said.
The EU's chief negotiator Michel Barnier said that "more clarity" was required from Theresa May over the plans.
