The government white paper on post-Brexit immigration policy, a draft of which was leaked to the Guardian in August, will not now be published until “late autumn”, the immigration minister, Brandon Lewis, has told a Conservative fringe meeting.
Lewis confirmed that the final version will include a commitment that freedom of movement for EU migrants will end in March 2019 – on Brexit day – but revealed that the key details of the new immigration policy, one of the most controversial areas of cabinet splits, will not emerge until next autumn, just months before Britain leaves the EU.
“We will be publishing a white paper later this autumn … There will be an immigration bill in the new year setting out the framework,” said Lewis.
The immigration minister also tried to defend the recent mistakes by the Home Office in wrongly threatening migrants with deportation and hinted that ministers have rebranded their “hostile environment” terminology by replacing it with talk of creating a “compliant environment” for migrants in Britain.
He said the Home Office was constrained in commenting on individual cases and that those highlighted in the press had “given only one side of the story”. The minister did, however, disclose that he had personally written to all 100 EU nationals who had been wrongly told to leave the country the day after the mistake was revealed.
In setting out a new timetable, Lewis told an Institute for Government fringe meeting that the Guardian’s leaked copy of the white paper was an early iteration of the policy and wide consultations were being carried out on Britain’s future labour needs. It had been expected that the immigration white paper would be published early this month.
Q&ABrexit phrasebook: what are citizens' rights?
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Citizens’ rights are the rights and protections offered to all EU citizens, including free movement and residence, equal treatment and a wide range of other rights under EU law regarding work, education, social security and health.
They are held by some 3.5 million citizens from other member states in the UK and about 1.2 million British nationals on the continent, and are a key part of the negotiations that are taking Britain out of Europe.
The Guardian leak in August sparked a strong reaction from the business community after it disclosed Home Office proposals to introduce a system of temporary residence permits for new EU migrants post-Brexit and remove their right to settle in the UK.
But Lewis said the key details of the new policy would not be made public until next autumn, when the government’s migration advisory committee (MAC) is due to issue its final reports on the impact of EU migrants on the British labour market and, separately, on the impact of international students.
He said the detail of the new approach to EU migrants would be set out in statutory instruments – secondary legislation that gets far less parliamentary scrutiny – after the MAC had reported. Although the minister insisted there would be “no cliff edge” in terms of changes in immigration policy, this timetable means that the important details for both the two-year implementation phase and the full post-Brexit immigration policy will not become clear until only five or six months before Brexit day.
Bronwen Maddox, director of the Institute for Government, said when it came to immigration policy, she remained “very sceptical” of even this revised timetable.
The 3million EU nationals campaign group commented: “UK government need to take the undefined, potentially retrospective citizens’ rights cut-off date off the table now. It already causes discrimination.”
The Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants said that EU nationals and all migrants deserved better than a system still subject to the whims of the home secretary, while others voiced concerns that the lack of parliamentary scrutiny inherent in secondary legislation would further undermine public confidence.
