Part of 2. Questions to the Counsel General and Brexit Minister (in respect of his Brexit Minister responsibilities) – in the Senedd at 2:37 pm on 22 January 2020.
I thank the Member for highlighting that very serious concern that a number of people have, and that I've had expressed to me directly as well—more or less in the terms in which the Member described them today. We have between 70,000 and 80,000 citizens living in Wales who were born in other parts of the EU, outside the UK, and we want them to stay in Wales and to continue making the full contribution that they do to our society and to our economy. I recognise entirely the point that she makes about the anxiety that many people feel in relation, in particular, to the question of being awarded only pre-settled status. I think, across the UK, the number of applications that result in that is currently running at around 44 per cent, which is pretty extraordinary really. I raised that point in terms, actually, with the UK Government, when I met with Ministers the week before last, and I was told that, effectively, pre-settled status becomes automatically settled status over time, which isn't in fact the case, as we know. And I've written to them to set the record straight, and to make the point that we need to do more to tackle this issue of concern.
As a Government, we have committed around, I think, £2 million to date, more or less, in seeking to communicate with people who should be taking steps to seek settled status in Wales. We've done that through—. We've recently had a new online campaign, but there's a large cohort of people for whom that won't be their main channel of communication. So we've been working with Settled and others to advertise, as it were, the availability of the scheme, and the various range of support that the Welsh Government, and other organisations, are making available, and seeking to target those in places like shops and cafes and churches, where EU citizens might be able to access that information in ways other than online. So we are seeking to find different channels to communicate with people, whilst at the same time I meet pretty regularly with Home Office officials, and take each opportunity to highlight some of the practical points that the Member makes in her question that are causing concern to so many people in Wales.