HOME OFFICE SUED BY WATCHDOG SET UP TO PROTECT POST-BREXIT RIGHTS OF EU CITIZENS

 The Guardian 14 December 2021 

The Home Office in Westminster, London. The Independent Monitoring Authority said it hoped the legal action would provide clarity for citizens with pre-settled status. Photograph: Yui Mok/PA

Lisa O'Carroll Brexit correspondent

Statutory body says 2.5 million EU nationals settled in UK have been put at automatic risk of losing rights

The statutory body set up to protect the post-Brexit rights of EU citizens settled in the UK has taken the dramatic step of launching legal action against the Home Office, accusing it of breaching their basic rights.

The Independent Monitoring Authority has launched judicial review proceedings on the grounds that 2.5 million EU citizens who have been granted pre-settled status have been put at automatic risk of losing rights to live, work or rent, or being deported by the Home Office.

EU nationals and their families who have been in the UK for more than five years get settled status under the Home Office immigration scheme set up for Brexit, but those who have been in the country fewer than five years get pre-settled status and must apply again for settled status.

However if they do not apply before their pre-settled status expires, they automatically lose their rights and could be liable to removal from the country, something the IMA has said it considers unlawful.

The legal action is a rare move that pits a statutory body against a government department. It will be keenly watched by immigration lawyers and campaign groups who have multiple criticisms over the Home Office’s policy under which 5.6 million EU citizens applied for post-Brexit status but only 2.6 million have been granted full settled status.

“In taking legal action now we hope to provide clarity for those citizens with pre-settled status of which there are 2.485 million as of 30 November 2021,” said Kathryn Chamberlain, the IMA chief executive.

Campaign groups have protested that the Home Office system is a time bomb for the 2.5 million. They fear many may simply forget to apply for settled status when their pre-settled status expires.

Others such as elderly people, children in care and vulnerable people including victims of domestic abuse, who had to rely on carers, council workers or charities to make their original application, may fall through the cracks.

The IMA will argue that the loss of work and home or right to healthcare is an unjustifiable and direct consequence of Brexit, not of the individual’s making.

The withdrawal agreement signed in 2020 was designed to protect the lifetime rights of EU citizens settled in the UK and British citizens settled in the EU.

But the IMA argued that the rights agreement only allows for loss of those rights in “limited circumstances”. It therefore considers the blanket policy of the Home Office is “in breach of the agreements”, it said.

A Home Office spokesperson said: “We take our citizens’ rights obligations very seriously and have implemented the arrangements we agreed under the withdrawal agreement in good faith. We do not comment on ongoing legal proceedings.”