Brexit: Immigration Review is too little, too late

It seems a little late in the game but the British Government has finally commissioned an assessment of what will happen to immigration after Brexit ends free movement between the UK and the 27 other EU nations.

Wasn’t immigration the driving force for millions of people who voted for Brexit in the June 2016 referendum? Brexiteers kept a relentless focus on the issue during the campaign, with provocative posters showing lines of what appeared to be non-European refugees queueing up to cross a border, and constant vows that only be leaving the EU could the country “take back control” of the UK’s borders.

Surveys after the referendum confirmed that immigration was the most important issue for a large slice of the 52% who voted to Leave. So why is Britain only NOW assessing the actual impact of the decision to pull out of Europe?

David Cameron was so confident of winning last year’s referendum that he failed to commission such studies on the impact of Brexit, leaving the campaign debate short on facts and long on wild claims from both sides.

The result is that it was only after the Leave result that voters started to become acquainted with some of the repercussions of Brexit, including warnings of severe economic damage unless any immigration crackdown includes exemptions for doctors, scientists, academics, students, fruit pickers, fish processors and bar workers, with many other industries and professions still coming forward to explain their reliance on EU immigration.

The newly planned assessment of Brexit’s impact on immigration and jobs is due to be completed in September 2018, six months before the UK is scheduled to leave the EU. The assessment will consider the regional distribution of EU migration, which sectors are most reliant on it, and the role of temporary and seasonal workers – precisely the sort of information that may have allowed a more informed debate before the referendum.

The Confederation of British Industry said businesses “urgently” needed to know what EU migration would look like, both in any “transitional” period after March 2019 and beyond. Trade Secretary Liam Fox is one of several ministers who has declared that the exit date is set in stone, insisting that “there’s no doubt about it, we will leave the EU at the end of March 2019”. But not everyone is so sure.

Many independent Brexit-watchers have become increasingly certain that the UK will not be able to leave as promptly and as cleanly as planned, as the nation simply will not be prepared for what follows. Article 50, the “exit clause” of the Lisbon Treaty, states that the timeframe for exit talks can be extended if doing so has the unanimous consent of all 28 member countries. Senior City economists are among those who believe the two-year timetable for negotiations was always highly ambitious, even before Theresa May’s decision to call a snap election delayed the start of the process.

Worst of all has been the lack of preparation when talks did get underway and the little time that has been spent so far negotiating the hundreds of areas covered by the talks.

Home Secretary Amber Rudd asked the independent Migration Advisory Committee on July 27, 13 months after the Brexit vote, to study the role of EU nationals in the UK economy to help guide plans for handling migration from Europe after Brexit.

When Brandon Lewis, the Immigration Minister, confirmed the review was being launched he was asked whether the Conservative Party stood by its long-standing but unfulfilled promise, which was repeated in its latest general election manifesto, to reduce annual net migration from its current level of 248,000 to below 100,000. Lewis confirmed that such a reduction was still party policy but said he would not set an “arbitrary” year by which it would be achieved.

Rudd also confirmed that the government intends to seek a transition period to implement the immigration changes in order to avoid what she described as a “cliff-edge for businesses and EU nationals.”

With one foot already dangling over the edge of the cliff isn’t this all far too little and way too late?

 

by Bob Graham

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