Nicola Sturgeon says promise, to be set out in SNP conference speech, ‘sends message to EU nationals that we want them to stay’

Nicola Sturgeon has offered to pay the residency fees for EU citizens who currently work in the Scottish public sector, in an effort to reinforce her anti-Brexit credentials as her party’s conference opened in Glasgow.



Sturgeon said the pledge would protect up to 20,000 EU nationals who work in Scotland’s hospitals, schools, universities and public agencies who face losing their UK residency after Brexit.

The measure was unveiled on Sunday as the Scottish National party gathered for a subdued conference, its first since it lost 21 Westminster seats in June when voters rejected Sturgeon’s attempt to use Brexit as the justification for a fresh Scottish independence referendum.

Sturgeon’s government is now changing tack to focus far more heavily on domestic policy and managing the Brexit process, pushing back a decision on the timing of an independence vote by at least a year.

The offer to pay residency costs for any EU citizen working in the public sector will be popular among SNP activists.

The UK government has said EU nationals will be able to apply for “settled status” if they have lived in the UK for five years or more at the point of Brexit. It remains unclear how much that would cost.

The current Home Office fee for naturalisation is £1,282, implying that it may cost the Scottish government up to £25.64m to fund those applications, but a UK residence card for nationals of non-EU countries costs far less, at £65.

After urging private companies to consider the same offer in a statement on Saturday, Sturgeon told The Andrew Marr Show on BBC1 on Sunday that the offer sent “a message to EU nationals that we want them to stay here because we welcome them”.

The Scottish Tories dismissed the offer as a stunt. The Scottish government would want EU nationals to have a vote in a future Scottish independence referendum, as they did in the 2014 referendum.

Restive members inflicted a heavy defeat on the party leadership on Sunday by voting overwhelmingly in favour of a motion calling for a ban on under-18s being recruited by the UK armed forces in roles requiring combat training.

The proposal from the SNP’s youth wing, backed by a large number of children’s rights and civil rights groups, was opposed by ministers, but delegates rejected calls for the motion to be amended and for it be dismissed.

It is the first SNP conference in recent years when Sturgeon or her predecessor Alex Salmond have not had an election or an imminent referendum to galvanise activists. Sturgeon confirmed in interviews with Marr on BBC1 and Robert Peston on ITV that she was some way off deciding if and when another referendum would be staged.



Sturgeon was forced to suspend her demands for a second independence vote by spring 2019 after the SNP held only 35 of its 56 Westminster seats in June’s snap election. She is instead pursuing a compromise deal with the Tories over the EU withdrawal bill, to increase protections for Scotland’s powers and spending after Brexit.

The latest opinion poll by YouGov for the Times, published on Saturday, showed the SNP’s support declining to 42% of the Holyrood constituency vote and 35% of the regional list vote for Holyrood, a 4.5% fall on the constituency vote and 6.7% down on the regional list, implying it would lose six seats of its 63 in a Scottish parliament election.

Sturgeon dismissed claims by Theresa May, the prime minister, and Ruth Davidson, the Scottish Tory leader, last week that they had saved the UK at the general election. She said they were “clutching at straws”, since the YouGov poll still put the SNP comfortably 17 points ahead of Labour in second place.

John Swinney, the deputy first minister, unveiled an attempt to tackle a substantial shortage of science, engineering and technology teachers in Scottish schools by offering a £20,000 bursary for professionals to take a one-year postgraduate course to retrain as a teacher.

Labour and the Scottish Tories said that policy was a direct lift of their own proposals. The shortages in those subjects have been so acute that headteachers at a school in Swinney’s own constituency and others have been forced to appeal for parents to step in by teaching classes.

Swinney earned a huge cheer from delegates when he directly linked the government’s efforts to reinvigorate its domestic agenda with its eventual goal of independence. “We meet today to rededicate ourselves to the cause of Scotland,” he told the hall. “We rededicate ourselves to independence – the best possible future for Scotland.”

Play Video 1:30 Nicola Sturgeon delays second Scottish independence referendum – video

Sturgeon is putting far greater emphasis on new domestic policies, including school reforms and heavier investment in education in deprived areas, a more radical climate strategy and a pledge to invest £500m above inflation into the NHS.

With Treasury funding being cut and Scottish tax receipts likely to be subdued, economists at the Fraser of Allander Institute calculate that these spending increases mean other departments could see their funding cut by up to 20% by 2020-21.

Public sector unions are pressing her government to increase pay across the board by 5%, after Sturgeon pledged to lift the 1% cap on public sector pay, putting her budgets under even greater pressure.

Pressed by both Marr and Peston to set out her thinking on the timing of the next referendum, Sturgeon insisted she had not dropped plans for a new independence vote.

She said the 2016 Holyrood elections, reinforced by the 35 seats the SNP won in June, gave her a hefty mandate to stage one. She confirmed she would update Holyrood on her thinking about the best timing later in 2018.

“At the core of everything I do, what will guide me, is what’s in the best interests of the people I represent as first minister, and not simply to accept the inevitability of a path that’s going to [damage] jobs and livelihoods and living standards,” she told Peston.