Eighty MPs call for EU nationals to be allowed to stay in UK after Brexit

European Commission Berlaymont Building - Image credit: Fotolia

Dozens of MPs have written to European Council president Donald Tusk to demand an early agreement on whether EU citizens living in the UK can stay after Brexit.

In a letter to Tusk the MPs – many of whom are Conservative – call for an end to the "anxiety and uncertainty" both for EU citizens and for British expats living in European countries.

The Government insists it wants to guarantee the rights of EU migrants living in the UK, but has refused to do so until a reciprocal agreement for Britons abroad is reached.

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EU leaders are reportedly refusing to discuss the issue until Article 50, which will set the clock ticking on the two year Brexit negotiation, is triggered.

But the MPs insisted people must not be used as “bargaining chips” in the negotiation and called for the issue to be discussed at next month's summit of EU leaders.

In the letter, organised by Tory eurosceptics Michael Tomlinson and Steve Baker, the MPs lash out at the EU's chief Brexit official Michel Barnier – who said on Twitter there would be "no negotiation without notification".

It says the group is "extremely concerned that members of the Commission – particularly commissioner Barnier – seem worryingly indifferent to securing reciprocal rights for our and your resident citizens”.

And it adds: "His attempts to prevent negotiations taking place on this issue between the democratically elected governments of EU member states are making it harder to achieve what is in everyone's best interest: ending the anxiety and uncertainty for UK and EU citizens living in one another's territories.

"It is the only just and humane thing to do and anything else would be unworthy of Europe's common values.

"People are not bargaining chips. Human beings are not cards to be traded 'tit for tat' in a political playground."

Former ministers and Brexit campaigners Michael Gove, John Whittingdale and Iain Duncan Smith are among the big names to have signed the letter.