A no-deal Brexit could put at risk up to 1 million UK citizens settled in other member states

British MEPs have called on EU leaders to urgently put in place a set of “continuity rights” for British nationals who may find themselves legally stranded on the continent in the event of no-deal Brexit.

They say the contingency plans that are under way are not enough and will risk the rights of up to 1 million Britons settled in EU member states.

The MEPs want them to have rights including ongoing inflation-linked pensions and healthcare rights, and residency and employment rights, such as so-called frontier worker rights that would allow British nationals living in one country to take a job or offer a service in another member state after Brexit.

“We are writing to urgently request that you act now to ringfence the rights of citizens within the Brexit negotiations,” they said in a letter to Jean-Claude Juncker, Donald Tusk, Michel Barnier and the European commission’s new no-deal tzar, Martin Selmayr. The letter said they would urge the UK to do the same for EU citizens in Britain.

“It is unacceptable that our EU citizens have been subject to such uncertainty for so long and while we fully recognise the failure is on the UK side, we now need the European Union to live up to its promises given that it has the capacity to do so,” the letter added.

The letter was signed by 25 MEPs including Catherine Beader, Liberal Democrat MP for South-East England, Wajid Khan, Labour MEP for North-West England, Jean Lambert, Green party MEP for London, and Seb Dance, deputy leader of Labour’s MEPs.

They are determined that ordinary people who exercised freedom of movement should not be the collateral damage in Britain’s political war.

But they are worried member states are working at different speeds and that the UK will rely on 27 bilateral agreements, which may not be signed in time or be uniform in nature.

“We need to harden up the contingencies for EU citizens and accept an interventionist policy across the EU because contingency plans are not continuity plans,” said Claude Moraes, Labour MEP for London and chair of the civil liberties, justice and home affairs committee in the European parliament.

At a recent meeting of the European parliament’s Brexit steering group, Moraes told Selmayr that the EU had a moral duty to step into the breach.

“We argued passionately at that meeting that the EC needs to be interventionist, that they need to take a strong interventionist line and this is a moral issue,” said Moraes.

He expects Selmayr to come back quickly with a set of strong guidelines to be issued to the member states covering the laws that need to be in place by 30 March.

This would cover pensions and reciprocal free healthcare, but also healthcare coverage for citizens living in countries such as France where there is a hybrid insurance-based and state system.

The development comes after campaigners for British nationals settled in the EU called on Theresa May to guarantee health cover payments for British pensioners living in the EU for at least two years to help secure wider residential rights as well as medical care in the event of a no-deal Brexit.

British in Europe activists are concerned the present system, which sees the NHS reimburse the medical bills for up to 190,000 pensioners, will fall away in the event of a no-deal.

In a letter to the prime minister, they said that if the current reciprocal health system, known as S1, ended it would “put pensioners in an intolerable situation”. UK pensioners “receiving vital care on that date (eg chemotherapy for cancer) will no longer be able to get treatment under the scheme”, they wrote.

They are also concerned that their pensions, which have already dropped with the value of sterling against the euro, will not continue to rise each year unless a reciprocal agreement is in place.

The Department of Health and Social Care said: “Our priority is to ensure UK nationals living or working in the EU can continue to access the healthcare they need as we exit the EU.

“The government has published extensive guidance for both travellers and British European residents on what to do in the event we leave the EU without a deal.”

A UK government spokesperson said: “We have made a unilateral offer to protect the rights of EU citizens in the UK even in the event of no deal, and we want the EU commission and member states to make similar guarantees for UK nationals living in the EU.”