REMEMBER the phrase Take Back Control? It was at the heart of the referendum debate and at the core of the Leave victory. It encompassed many issues but one of the most fundamental was taking back control over migration.
One of the key purposes of Brexit was to make sure that we are once again able to decide how many and which people we allow into the country.
As an EU member we have been obliged to allow free movement from the other 27 member states – in other words, anyone from any EU member state who wants to come here to work is allowed to do so.
In the year after the EU referendum in June 2016, it has been calculated that 230,000 citizens from other EU countries took advantage of that and moved to the UK.
Free movement is one of the so-called pillars of the EU and any move to change it will always be rejected.
David Cameron made a paltry attempt when he began his ill-fated renegotiation of our membership but quickly got nowhere.
That’s why the only way to stop free movement is to leave the EU – which is what we are about to do.
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As part of that Brexit process there is to be a transition period, almost certainly lasting two years. EU citizens will still be able to live and work here during the transition period.
But it’s expected that there would be two crucial differences from free movement: they would have to register with the Home Office and would no longer automatically qualify to live in the UK permanently.
One of the issues decided in December, when we reached agreement with the other 27 EU members over the so-called phase one of Brexit negotiations, was how this transition period would affect the idea of free movement.
The deal was clear.
Free movement – specifically the right of any EU citizen to move to the UK and stay here to work – would end on the day after our withdrawal in March 2019.
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Don’t take my word for it.
To quote Paragraph 8 of the agreement: “The specified date [for the end of free movement] should be the time of the UK’s withdrawal.”
That’s clear and unambiguous.
Free movement ends at the end of next March.
But – oh, what a surprise!
No sooner had we signed the deal in December than a series of EU leaders – including that most irritating usual suspect, federalist MEP Guy Verhofstadt – started to complain that it meant that EU workers who arrived in the transition period after March 2019 would lose any right to reside here.
You might well be thinking, “Well, yes, that’s the entire point”.
One of the central purposes of our withdrawal from the EU is to remove the right of the rest of the EU to come here simply because they want to.
It was only a few weeks ago, on December 8, that the EU signed up to a deal with the UK agreeing to precisely that withdrawal of the rights of residency that come with free movement.
Yet now some of them want to unravel the deal, saying that the rules of free movement should continue during the transition period.
With negotiations beginning over the details of the transition, the likes of Mr Verhofstadt are insisting: “Citizens’ rights during the transition are not negotiable.
We will not accept that there are two sets of rights for EU citizens.”
And yesterday EU officials were reported as saying that the demand that the cut-off date for residency rights be moved back to the end of the transition period was “non-negotiable” and it was “inconceivable” that the UK could avoid free movement during the transition.
This is simply barking.
And it shows how, even now, they still don’t get what Brexit really means.
It is, of course, entirely right that the 3.2 million EU citizens who have moved here so far are offered a guarantee by the British Government that they can stay.
They moved here legally and have done nothing wrong.
But now that we are leaving the EU, everyone knows we are leaving, and the context has changed completely.
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There is nothing, legally, that we can do about those EU citizens who move here until we leave.
But there is every legal – and moral – reason to say that if you come here during the transition, then you are on notice that you no longer have the right to stay here.
Not least because the other 27 EU leaders have already signed an agreement saying just that!
And Theresa May has given short shrift to these ludicrous demands.
As she put it this week, speaking to reporters on her trip to China: existing immigrants deserve protection because they have “made a life choice” based on the UK’s EU membership.
But “for those who come after March 2019, that will be different because they will be coming to a UK they know will be outside the EU”.
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Migration Watch, the think tank that has consistently reported immigration levels more accurately than the Government’s initial figures, said that extending free movement into the transition period could mean up to a million extra EU migrants being given the right to live in Britain.
So much for taking back control.
Mrs May has rightly made clear that she is not going to budge on this.
Ending free movement is a pivotal part of Brexit.
And if democracy and the votes of 17,410,742 British citizens are to mean anything, then Brexit really must mean Brexit.
https://www.express.co.uk/comment/expresscomment/913531/brexit-free-movement-end-theresa-may-eu-talks-Guy-Verhofstadt-uk-border-control
