Ministers are preparing to begin removing post-Brexit residency rights from EU citizens who are no longer considered to be “continuously” living in the UK.
The move is permitted under the 2020 Brexit withdrawal agreement, but the method being used to judge whether people have been absent from the country has raised immediate concerns.
According to the report, the Home Office plans to rely in part on travel data to assess whether an EU citizen has remained continuously resident in the UK. That approach has drawn scrutiny because of the earlier HMRC fiasco, in which almost 20,000 parents lost child benefits after inaccurate Home Office border data was used in the process.
The issue is likely to intensify debate over how the government uses official travel records and border information to make decisions affecting residents’ rights. Critics are expected to question whether those data sources are reliable enough to determine long-term residence status in cases that can have significant personal and legal consequences.
The policy affects EU citizens whose rights in the UK were protected after Brexit, but only while they could be shown to be continuously living in the country. The new crackdown would apply when ministers decide that this condition is no longer met.
The announcement comes against a backdrop of wider concern about administrative errors and the impact of flawed data on immigration and benefits decisions. The HMRC case has already left a mark on public trust in the systems used to track movement in and out of the UK, making the Home Office’s reliance on travel data particularly controversial.
Under the withdrawal agreement, the government is acting within the law by reviewing residency rights in this way. But the decision to use border and travel information as part of that assessment is likely to face close examination as the policy is put into practice.
