Unwelcoming committee
Boris’s government is sending the wrong signals over Brexit
FRASER NELSON
‘Of course we will have a generous
scheme to replace it,’ says a senior
No. 10 source. Maybe so, but there is
no word of a replacement now —
hence the uncertainty. If today a
Newcastle factory wants to employ a
French data analyst for a job starting in
three months’ time, it’s far from clear
that they’ll be able to do so..
There are worrying signs of sloppi-
ness, even negligence, in the way the
Home Office is handling all this. It has
managed to process just one million of
three million EU nationals in Britain
— and, of these, only around 700,000 have
been granted permanent status. It has an app
that can be used to apply, but the iPhone ver-
sion won’t be ready until the end of the year.
One of the government’s adverts boasting
about how simple it is for EU nationals to
register has been banned by the Advertising
Standards Agency because it exaggerated
how easy the process is.
When cases hit the headlines, officials
move suspiciously quickly. Mr Wawrzyniak,
the chef, was suddenly granted permanent
settled status after he made a fuss. Mr Berti-
net was contacted by the Home Office and
told that he pressed the wrong button when
he applied online — which, if true, suggests
something badly wrong with the system. But
as he says, his case was helped by his pub-
lic profile. Of the 300,000 Europeans living
in Britain who have so far been given only
temporary status, how many are victims of
similar mistakes?
No one seriously thinks Italians are going
to be rounded up and sent back on a boat.
But the uncertainty, in itself, is unforgiv-
able — and, to some, it will suggest that the
Windrush debacle was not an anomaly but
the Tory default. ‘My issue is not so much
whether I’m allowed to stay, it’s more why
should I have this threat hanging over me,’
Ms Amato tells me. ‘I’ve gone from being a
citizen in this country with equal rights to
being a second-class citizen, with the same
treatment as an immigrant. My parents were
immigrants, but I don’t see myself as one,
having lived here all my life.’
Each one of those wrongly deniedS
ince he arrived in Bath from Brit-
tany 31 years ago, Richard Berti-
net has been a model immigrant.
He’s not just a popular baker; he runs a
breadmaking school and his cookbook is
regarded by his fans as a bible of bread.
Like all resident EU nationals, he was
told that Brexit wouldn’t affect him —
so he was shocked to receive a letter last
week saying that he has failed to quali-
fy for permanent residence and that he
has five years to reapply, or go back to
France. His case led the local news last
week, raising the question: what kind of
Brexit is Boris Johnson planning?
Anna Amato is asking the same thing.
A former NHS clerk who was born in Italy
but has lived in Britain since the age of two,
she is — to use a Boris phrase — as Brit-
ish as Tizer and Y-fronts. Mother to British
children, wife to a British husband, and yet
also told last week by the Home Office that
her application for permanent residence
has been rejected. Damian Wawrzyniak, a
Polish chef who has lived here for 15 years
and has cooked for the royal family, also had
his application turned down. In each case,
it’s a shock. But it’s also baffling: isn’t this
exactly what the new PM said would never,
could never happen?
Since taking office, the Prime Minister
has shown far more organisation (and grip)
than his most optimistic admirers expected.
But we are hearing strikingly little about his
vision of a ‘global Brexit’, his great theme
as foreign secretary. Or his promise of ‘lib-
eral conservatism’, the weapon that — he
assured MPs — would save them from the
yellow peril of a Liberal Democrat resur-
gence. If there is a snap election, his first
priority is to win voters from Nigel Farage’s
Brexit party — and this, it seems, requires
different tactics. So we’re hearing about
plans to lock people up for longer and build
more prisons to do so.
A couple of weeks ago it was announced
that free movement of people, the visa-
exempt system that lets all EU nationals live
and work freely anywhere on the continent,
will end at 11 p.m. on 31 October. There has
been no word about what will replace it.Will Europeans need visas? If so, what kind?
Will this affect the two million EU nationals
living in Britain who are not yet documented
as having the right to work and stay? There
is no official guidance: just a promise that
it will arrive ‘shortly’. Cue confusion, even
panic. Immigration law firms say they are at
a loss as to what to advise clients.
Talking tough has brought no elector-
al penalty: Brexit party voters are flocking
to the Tories, who now have a comfortable
opinion poll lead. But rejecting EU nation-als runs in direct contradiction to what the
Prime Minister explicitly promised. On his
first day, Johnson abolished Theresa May’s
immigration target and personally told EU
nationals living in Britain that they could
stay, no matter what. If they’d been here
five years, they were told that settled status
would be a formality. He wants to extend
a Brexit welcome to the world’s scientists.
But a less welcoming story is told by rejec-
tion letters now being churned out by the
Home Office: hundreds of thousands of EU
nationals have so far been given temporary,
rather than permanent status.
In No. 10, the view is that nothing has
changed. That Priti Patel, the Home Secre-
tary, was simply stating the obvious — a legal
technicality — when she said that free move-
ment will end when Britain leaves the EU.If a European in the UK asks to stay,
the answer should be yes, unless
there’s a very good reason to say no