Markus Andrews

Tens of thousands of EU nationals who have made their homes in the UK could lose their right to stay after being forced to return to their home countries due to the coronavirus pandemic, a new report has warned. After as many as 1.3m foreign workers left the UK last year – the largest exodus since the Second World War – campaigners fear that many may have intended to return to homes and jobs in Britain, but have lost their rights because they felt unable to come back within six months, at a time when Europe was under public health restrictions and travel ground to a virtual halt.Official Home Office guidance states that an absence of more than six months from the UK as a result of the coronavirus outbreak will “not necessarily” affect a claim for “pre-settled status”, but guarantees this only for individuals whose return was delayed because they were personally ill with Covid-19, in quarantine or studying. Absences of longer than 12 months will mean that any previous residence in the UK can no longer be counted towards an application.The report by the campaign group Right to Stay – a joint initiative of the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants and Another Europe is Possible – warned that these were among the victims of a post-Brexit system which they describe as a “time bomb” of uncertainty for millions of people who have lost the freedom of movement guaranteed by EU membership.Among them are potentially tens of thousands of long-term UK residents – including key workers on the pandemic frontline – who will suddenly find themselves subject to a “hostile environment” because they inadvertently fail to apply for settled status by the deadline of June this year, the report warned.It called for the deadline to be scrapped and automatic right to stay granted to all. And it demanded a review of the requirement for continuous residence to take into account the extraordinary circumstances of the Covid outbreak.Settled status grants an EU national with five years’ residence in the UK the right to remain, while pre-settled status allows any living here before 31 December 2020 to stay until they reach the five-year mark, when they will be required to make a new application.Inside Politics newsletterThe latest news on Brexit, politics and beyond direct to your inbox every weekdayInside Politics newsletterThe latest news on Brexit, politics and beyond direct to your inbox every weekdayThe report warned that 1.93m people allotted pre-settled status now face “huge uncertainty” stretching for years before they know whether they can stay for the long term.Immigration minister Kevin Foster dismissed the report’s claims as “exaggerated” and warned that they could have the effect of deterring people from applying for the right to stay.He pointed to the Home Office’s success in granting settled or pre-settled status to more than 4.5m of the 5m people who have applied to the EU Settlement Scheme (EUSS).But the Right to Stay campaigners said that the government does not know the exact number of EU nationals resident in the UK. If just 1 per cent of them “fall through the net” that would amount to tens of thousands of people potentially facing loss of benefits, detention and removal from the country, they said.According to a JCWI survey cited in the report, some one in seven European nationals working in the care system did not know about the EUSS scheme and one in three did not know the deadline to apply.Already, the report warned that the introduction of a new immigration system months before the June deadline has led to confusion over EU nationals’ rights.Some have been wrongly asked for proof of status to access jobs, education and others have been wrongly charged for healthcare, despite official Home Office guidance stating that nothing should change until 1 July, said the paper.Among cases cited in the report was a Bulgarian woman called Anna who first came to the UK with her partner in 2016 to work on a farm and later settled and found a job in Manchester. They returned to Bulgaria for Anna to have a baby shortly before the pandemic began last year, and did not feel comfortable to return until January this year. As a result of being away for more than six months and missing the 31 December cut-off for starting a new period of residence, they lost their right to apply for pre-settled status despite having been in the UK lawfully, working and paying taxes, for several years.The Right to Stay report warned: “As it stands, tens of thousands of people who have ended up abroad because they lost their jobs, wanted to be closer to their family or felt unsafe in the UK will still have lost their right to a settled status.“Some people – those who managed to apply for status before the pandemic – will return and be able to live and work in the UK until their pre-settled status runs out. However, they will discover that they have already lost their right to apply for settled status and will have to leave and then seek an alternative route in. Others, like Anna, have already lost their right to take part in the EUSS scheme altogether.”The campaigners claimed that the settled status scheme broke Boris Johnson’s promise in 2016, when he was heading the Leave campaign, that after Brexit “there will be no change for EU citizens already lawfully resident here. These EU citizens will automatically be granted Indefinite Leave to Remain and will be treated no less favourably than they are at present.”The report’s author, Alena Ivanova of Another Europe is Possible, said: “Even if there is a 99% success rate in applications, that means that tens of thousands of EU nationals face losing their right to be in the UK. “But what we have now uncovered in this report goes way beyond that: the pandemic, and the government’s failure to account for its impact, will leave many people without rights; residents are already being wrongly denied access to work, housing and services; and the use of pre-settled status is in effect a time bomb which may result in huge numbers of people losing their status later on. The entire scheme is on the brink of collapse.”And the JCWI’s Caitlin Boswell said: ”With just over 4 months till the cut-off point and the UK still in the grips of the Covid pandemic, it couldn’t be more urgent that the government acts now and lifts the deadline. “This is the only way to avoid tens of thousands of our EU friends and neighbours becoming vulnerable to harmful hostile environment policies – including detention and removal – overnight.”But Mr Foster said: “With more than 5m applications already received and more than 4.5m grants of status already made, the EU Settlement Scheme is a major success. Given these facts the suggestion it is ‘on the verge of collapse’ is wildly inaccurate and the only effect of doing so could be to deter people from applying.”“We will not be distracted by these types of exaggerated claims from our work to ensure our friends and neighbours who arrived in the UK during the time of free movement get the status they deserve, with support available online, on the phone and through our 72 grant-funded organisations.” More

The UK government has been warned against cutting aid to Yemen, amid fears tens of millions of pounds will be slashed from Britain’s contribution to humanitarian relief efforts.Millions of people in the war-torn country will go hungry this year and hundreds of thousands are already facing famine, the UN says.Ahead of a UN donor conference on Monday, at which secretary-general Antonio Guterres will ask the world for $3.85bn (£2.76bn) in aid for Yemen, former Tory minister Andrew Mitchell said UK funding might fall by as much as half from 2020 levels, when £214m was sent.Mr Mitchell said reducing help for Yemen would have dire consequences and damage Britain’s global standing, given its backing for Saudi Arabia’s coalition, which is battling Houthi rebels there in a conflict that has caused widespread civilian casualties.
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Labour’s new Scottish leader has challenged Keir Starmer to end his silence on Brexit and campaign for “greater alignment” with the EU.Anas Sarwar became the first senior party figure to push for what would be a renegotiation of the threadbare trade deal negotiated by Boris Johnson – something his leader has ruled out.“I support the EU, I want us to have as close a relationship with the EU as possible,” Mr Sarwar said, following his election at the weekend.“I have been advocating for us to have greater alignment around the single market and customs union ever since the UK voted to leave the union.”The comments come after Sir Keir failed to even mention Brexit in what Labour billed as the most important speech of his time as leader, in which he vowed to be as bold as Clement Attlee.Some fear the decision has made it difficult to criticise the agreement now, while Sir Keir is keen to draw a line under Brexit as he attempts to woo back ‘Red Wall’ voters lost to the Tories.Inside Politics newsletterThe latest news on Brexit, politics and beyond direct to your inbox every weekdayInside Politics newsletterThe latest news on Brexit, politics and beyond direct to your inbox every weekdayMr Sarwar won the leadership contest on Saturday with 57.6 per cent of the vote, but faces a momentous task to rebuild the Labour party in Scotland.The last three polls show Labour in third place behind the Scottish National Party and the Conservatives – with just 10 weeks until May’s crucial elections to the Holyrood parliament.The new leader made clear his belief that Scotland would be better off with much closer links to the EU – and described its lost voters as “the original red wall”.It was where Labour’s vote first collapsed and, without a significant recovery for the party in Scotland, the party would be unable to win the next general election, he said.“I still want Scotland to have as close alignment as possible with the EU,” Mr Sarwar told The Guardian.“But the idea that Scottish independence is a light switch moment that is not going to be chaotic, that it isn’t going to take time, and isn’t going to create more division, is just not credible.“Brexit was bad for Scotland, but independence would be an amplifier, a multiplier of the negatives of Brexit.” At a pre-Budget speech, Anneliese Dodds, the shadow Chancellor, said Labour was not “blasé” about the problems facing traders – but would not be seeking to rejoin the customs union.“We’ve had that deal concluded by the Conservative government. Of course, some elements of it still aren’t sorted out.“But would we would be seeking to immediately renegotiate this deal? No, we’ve got to make the current deal work.” More

A government scientific adviser has warned there is always a risk the country “might have to go backwards” after the national coronavirus lockdown is eased.Public Health England (PHE) said on Sunday six cases of the variant, which may spread more rapidly and may not respond as well to existing vaccines, had been found. Three of the cases were identified in England and three in Scotland.Pressed how worried he was regarding the detection of the Brazil variant in the UK, professor Medley told the BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “Well I think it is a variant of concern and that we are going to be faced with these in the next six months.“As we move towards relaxing measures then there are going to be challenges on the way. There is always a risk we might have to go backwards and that’s what no-one wants to do, is actually open up and have to close down again. Professor Medley said it was vital the monitor the variants, including sequencing, to know the impact of new variants, as he also warned that regional variations in prevalence of the virus may pose a bigger risk.Inside Politics newsletterThe latest news on Brexit, politics and beyond direct to your inbox every weekdayInside Politics newsletterThe latest news on Brexit, politics and beyond direct to your inbox every weekday“I think that’s in a way going to be a bigger challenge for the government going forward than the variants if I’m being completely honest,” he said.The comments appear to cast doubt on the national strategy adopted by Boris Johnson to ease lockdown measures in England. Unveiling the government’s roadmap last week, the prime minister laid out a national relaxation of measures, rather than a return to the regional, tiered system.The professor of infectious disease modelling at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine added: “We are already seeing and when we start opening up, we will see more variant in terms of prevalence around different parts of the country. “At the moment all the thinking I’ve seen has been largely national in terms of thinking about what the data are what we need to guide the process of releasing these measures, but the data will show different things in different parts of the country. “So the challenge will be what do you do in terms of opening things up when in one place it’s a good idea and other places it isn’t.”In a separate interview, Mr Zahawi said surge testing in South Gloucestershire was beginning today as a “precautionary measure” following the detection of the Brazil variant.Dr Susan Hopkins, the strategic director at Public Health England, said the one unidentified person with the variant may have taken a home test and could be helped in locating their results and given further advice.“We’re making an appeal for anyone out there who was tested on February 12 and 13, probably by a home test or a test that was a drop and collect from a local authority system, and may not have completed the form completely online, or may have thought they did, but still hasn’t got their results,” she told the BBC.Dr Hopkins added: ”We are looking at where that test may have been sent from and to, working with the postal services, and the courier services.“We’re also looking to try and track where exactly that sample may have been sent to on a local authority system.“But I think the public appeal is also a belt and braces approach to ensure that we’ve gone through every option to find this individual.” More

Chancellor Rishi Sunak will use Wednesday’s Budget to announce a further £1.65bn “shot in the arm” for the UK’s roll-out of Coivd-19 vaccines.The announcement comes as the tally of Britons receiving their first dose of the life-saving vaccines topped 20 million – one of the highest per-capita totals in the world.Mr Sunak will also pledge a further £33m for vaccine testing and development to protect against future outbreaks and variants, as well as £22m for a study to test the effectiveness of combining different coronavirus vaccines and determine whether a third jab can improve protection.Speaking ahead of his 3 March statement, Mr Sunak said:“The UK’s vaccination programme has been a great success and is protecting lives and livelihoods, with over 19 million people already receiving their first dose. “But it’s essential we maintain this momentum.“Protecting ourselves against the virus means we will be able to lift restrictions, reopen our economy and focus our attention on creating jobs and stimulating growth.”The new money will bring the UK’s total spending on the vaccine programme to more than £13bn.Inside Politics newsletterThe latest news on Brexit, politics and beyond direct to your inbox every weekdayInside Politics newsletterThe latest news on Brexit, politics and beyond direct to your inbox every weekdayA report in December by the National Audit Office spending watchdog found that the UK’s push to secure and administer hundreds of millions of doses had cost up to £11.7bn up to that point. The government had signed deals for five vaccines providing up to 267m doses at an expected cost of £2.9bn, with non-binding agreements with two other companies set to bring total provision to 357m doses, the report said. Additional costs including those associated with sponsoring trials, distributing and administering the vaccines lifted the total spend to £11.7bn.The new spending will include a £28m boost to UK life science to expand vaccine testing capability and the ability to rapidly acquire samples of new variants. It will also contain £5m for the creation of a ‘library’ of Covid-19 vaccines at the Centre for Process Innovation in Darlington that will work against different variants of the virus. More

Gordon Brown has added to pressure on the chancellor to scale up and extend job support schemes in his Budget this week or risk “betraying a generation of unemployed”.The former prime minister called on Rishi Sunak to prolong the government’s job opportunity Kickstart scheme beyond its current December 2021 end date to “protect the life chances” of a million people under the age of 25 who are expected to be out of a job by the end of this year.His comments are included in a report by the Alliance for Full Employment (AFFE), which estimates there are now at least 1,000 under-25s in every constituency in Britain classed as long-term unemployed – which includes those without a job for at least six months.Research by the group shows just 3 in every 1,000 long-term unemployed people under 25 years old have been able to receive help from the Kickstart scheme despite the government’s promise to deliver 250,000 job places through the scheme.Mr Brown also said the chancellor must bring forward the start date of his £2.9bn adult unemployment scheme, Restart, which is due to begin in the summer. If he fails to do so, it will mean access to help for unemployed adults will not be available until winter 2021 when they have been jobless for 18 months, he added.“Government complacency is betraying a generation of unemployed,” said Mr Brown. “The pandemic hit a year ago but the government’s failure to move quickly is condemning a whole generation of young people to joblessness and rejection and many to mental depression.“The government won’t release regional data to tell us what’s happening on the ground but the research suggests in a city of half a million people like Liverpool or Bristol or Manchester the numbers in the work programmes under Kickstart are a little more than 20 and at best 30 in each place.Inside Politics newsletterThe latest news on Brexit, politics and beyond direct to your inbox every weekdayInside Politics newsletterThe latest news on Brexit, politics and beyond direct to your inbox every weekday“There could be as few as 10 on Kickstart in Newcastle maybe and perhaps just half a dozen in hard-hit Blackpool, currently an unemployment blackspot.”He continued: “And worse even than this shocking blow to young people, is the scandalous failure so far to place just one adult on the government’s programme for the long-term unemployed.“The Restart programme was supposed to offer a job to those [who] have been out of work for 12 months. By the time men and women are offered places this summer and autumn, thousands will have been out of work for 18 months.”Mr Brown urged Mr Sunak to “kickstart Kickstart and restart Restart” and to deliver a Budget with the “ambition and money to outmatch the scale of the looming unemployment tragedy”.Data from the Office for National Statistics shows there are now 470,000 adults and young people officially registered as long-term unemployed. The Learning and Work Institute has predicted the figure could rise to 800,000 and may even surpass a million within the coming months.The AFFE’s report recommends that Mr Sunak extend the furlough scheme until lockdown ends and then introduce a long-term, part-time wage support scheme to give businesses a boost while they restart economic activity.The chancellor should also consider a short-term incentives for employers to hire more people, and advance parts of the £100bn capital investment programme that can lead to immediate job creation, said the group, among other recommendations.Mr Sunak will set out his spring Budget on 3 March, and has indicated he will extend emergency support packages as lockdown winds down. However, he did not rule out raising taxes before cutting them ahead of the next election. More

Labour has issued a last-minute call to chancellor Rishi Sunak not to raise taxes, cut welfare or freeze public sector pay in Wednesday’s Budget, warning the “triple hammer blow” would undermine the UK’s recovery from the coronavirus crisis. The call from shadow chancellor Anneliese Dodds came after Mr Sunak signalled on Sunday he will use the Budget to set a course for belt-tightening to pay down the UK’s £2 trillion national debt, declaring he intends to “level with people” about the perilous state of the public finances.However it remained unclear whether his planned tax raids – expected to include a rise in corporation tax to as much as 25 per cent and a freeze on income tax thresholds to drag more workers into higher bands – will be immediate or phased in over the coming years.Mr Sunak indicated he will extend furlough, business support and the £20-a-week uplift to welfare benefits in “alignment” with Boris Johnson’s 21 June timetable for lifting lockdown.But he remains under pressure from industry and unions to keep the measures in place until companies get back on their feet, with Ms Dodds arguing that furlough must stay until demand returns and other business support at least until September.And he today faces a demand from the influential 45-strong Northern Research Group of Tory MPs in red wall seats won from Labour in 2019 for a dramatic cut in business rates to save high street shops.In a letter to the chancellor, the NRG MPs call for a “bold” cut in rates to 35 per cent of market rents, from their current level of more than 50 per cent, in order to “level the playing field” between bricks-and-mortar businesses and online retailers which have been able to continue trading during the town centre shutdowns of the pandemic.Inside Politics newsletterThe latest news on Brexit, politics and beyond direct to your inbox every weekdayInside Politics newsletterThe latest news on Brexit, politics and beyond direct to your inbox every weekdayNRG chair Jake Berry said: “We need to make sure that once people can go shopping again, they have high streets to go back to. “Physical shops are fundamental both for the economic future of our towns and cities, but also to create the strong social fabric which will help bind our communities together. They offer an experience that online shopping, valuable as it is, cannot match.” Meanwhile, former prime minister Gordon Brown accused the government of “betraying a generation of unemployed” and said the chancellor must use the Budget to scale up support for jobless young people, after his flagship Kickstart scheme reached just three in 1,000 of out-of-work under-25s.In a pre-Budget speech in London, Ms Dodds will say that Mr Sunak’s reported plan to freeze public sector pay for up to three years to recoup some of the £280bn borrowed for Covid support was “economically illiterate” at a time when the economy will be relying on consumer spending to fuel recovery.Ms Dodds will demand a plan to protect jobs and businesses, give families certainty and secure the recovery, not a “triple hammer blow of council tax rises, social security cuts and pay freezes”.She will say the Budget is “a test of character” for Mr Sunak after a decade of “Conservative mismanagement of the economy” and “12 months of irresponsible decision-making” by the chancellor left Britain with the worst economic crisis of any major economy.Ms Dodds will identify a “Sunak effect” of repeatedly delaying the announcement of financial support packages over the past year beyond the point at which companies were forced to make tens of thousands of redundancies.“While he dithers and delays, people right across the country lose their jobs,” she will say.Warning that the chancellor is making the same mistake again by allowing the clock to run down on schemes which are due to expire at the end of March, she will call on Mr Sunak to:* Keep furlough so long as health restrictions remain and demand is low;* Maintain business rates relief and the reduced rate of VAT for at least six months to September;* Provide clarity on the future of support for the self-employed; and* Extend the £500 self-isolation payment to those without a sick pay scheme at work.Ms Dodds and Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer are coming under attack from the party’s left for joining Conservative backbenchers in opposing an immediate rise in taxes on big business.
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Support for Scottish independence has dropped to 50 per cent for the first time since June last year, a new poll suggests.A Survation survey of 1,000 Scots for the Sunday Mail found that support for separation has fallen, losing a lead built in the past nine months that bolstered the confidence of supporters heading into May’s Holyrood elections.According to the poll, when undecided voters are removed, support evens out at 50 per cent for both sides.When undecided voters are included, however, the Yes supporting side loses its lead by 44 per cent to 43 per cent, with 13 per cent of people saying they do not yet know how they would vote.A Survation poll done for the Scot Goes Pop blog in January gave independence supporters a 51 per cent to 49 per cent edge.The poll will bring hope for supporters of the union, who have watched as support for independence has grown since their referendum win with 55 per cent of the vote in 2014.Pamela Nash, the chief executive of Scotland in Union, said: “It’s welcome that support for remaining in the UK is on the rise.Inside Politics newsletterThe latest news on Brexit, politics and beyond direct to your inbox every weekdayInside Politics newsletterThe latest news on Brexit, politics and beyond direct to your inbox every weekday“People are recognising that as we navigate out of the Covid crisis with a successful UK-wide vaccination programme, we are stronger together.“The SNP is obsessed with trying to divide Scotland, but the priority should be working together on a recovery for everyone in the country.”But SNP depute leader Keith Brown has said polls are tightening as May’s Holyrood elections near.He said: “The SNP continues to have Scotland’s best interest at heart, and will work hard every day to maintain the trust and confidence of the Scottish people.“The people of Scotland have shown, in poll after poll and election after election, that they place their trust in Nicola Sturgeon and the SNP to lead Scotland through the coronavirus pandemic and beyond.“May’s election offers Scotland two choices: more broken promises and austerity measures under Boris Johnson, or the right to decide if Scotland has a progressive future within the European Union as an independent country.“With both votes SNP, we can deliver a strong, fair and green recovery and put Scotland’s future in Scotland’s hands – not Boris Johnson’s.”Mr Salmond has previously accused some in the highest echelons of the SNP of engaging in a “malicious and concerted” effort to exclude him from public life, claims he repeated during a six-hour committee appearance.Fieldwork for the poll was conducted on Thursday, the day before Mr Salmond appeared before the inquiry, but 39 per cent of those asked, according to the Sunday Mail, said they believe there to have been some sort of “cover up” in the Scottish government’s handling of harassment complaints against the former first minister.Some 50 per cent said Ms Sturgeon should resign if she is found to have broken the ministerial code in a separate inquiry led by James Hamilton QC, an independent adviser on the code. More