Campaign groups, charities and immigration lawyers have reignited work to raise awareness of the dangers posed by eliminating physical status documents, which could cause ‘a repeat of the Windrush disaster’
Civil society groups and expert lawyers have issued an urgent call for the new government to reverse plans to equip the UK with an entirely digital system of granting and demonstrating immigration status.
The EU Settlement Scheme – through which EU nationals can apply for rights to live and work in the UK – is the first part of the immigration system to have gone entirely digital. The nearly six million people so far granted status have not been issued with any physical proof.
To prove their rights, status holders must instead enter their passport details and date of birth via a GOV.UK service, which then provides a code – which can, in turn, be provided to the organisation undertaking the status check, such as an employer, landlord, or public services provider.
Earlier this year, the Home Office begun the process of moving all current holders of biometric residence permit to a new and wholly digital system of eVisas. This migration is due to conclude by the end of this year, with the intention beyond that to eliminate all further physical immigration documents completely and switch to a fully virtual system by the start of 2026.
Throughout the process of rolling out the Settlement Scheme, the likes of parliamentary committees and campaign groups have repeatedly counselled government against the dangers of an entirely digital regime – including multiple warnings that such a system risks creating “another Windrush”.
Last year, civil society organisations raised further “grave concerns” about the functioning of the EU status system, after it was discovered the Home Office might have wrongly issued benefits payments to tens of thousands of people as a result of a data error.
At the forefront of much of the campaigning over the past six years has been the the3million, an organisation formed after the Brexit vote to advocate for the rights and welfare of EU nationals.
With a new government now having taken office, the group has reignited the campaign to ditch the outgoing administration’s plan digital-only status system – for the both the Settlement Scheme and the wider immigration system. In a letter to the prime minister Keir Starmer, undersigned by 76 organisations, the3million has set out a range of actions that the new administration should “urgently” take to “fix the broken immigration system”.
High up the on list of recommendations is a call to “fix digital status”.
“EU citizens and family members under the EU Settlement Scheme were treated as guinea pigs, as the first to be issued with digital-only status. The planned roll-out to all migration routes by the end of 2024 must be halted,” the letter says. “This system is not fit for purpose and chaos will ensue in 2025 if changes aren’t made now. Digital status is inaccessible to many, and recent media reports have shown that the underlying Home Office data systems are seriously compromised.”
Related content
- Brexit: ‘No known data breaches’ of EU citizens’ digital status since programme launch, minister claims
- ‘Unsettling and very stressful’ – Home Office letter warns settled EU citizens of benefit cut-off
- EU settlement scheme received six million applications
The campaign organisation has previously put forward proposals for the introduction of secure QR codes available both physically and digitally – similar to that which was used for the NHS Covid pass to demonstrate vaccination or test status – which the3million claim would offer the same levels of security as a digital-only system, while providing greater functionality and accessibility for users.
In its missive to the new PM, the group claimed the current set-up often malfunctions when status-holders need to prove their rights, and reiterated that viable alternatives are available.
“People are not issued a digital document; instead, there is a need to repeatedly engage with an online-only process which often fails at one of the several steps needed before status is displayed,” the letter says. “A stakeholder consultation process must be urgently set up to look into alternative implementations that give the status holder a secure, cost-effective proof of status that is accessible at all times. There are existing proposals ready to be explored.”
The latest campaign is supported by a wide range of other charities and civil society organisations, largely focused on migrants’ rights, as well as various solicitors and academics.
Other measures these organisations are collectively calling for include urgent work to clear a backlog of settled status applications that the letter claims currently stands at 137,040. This could be supported by automatically granting settled status once the five-year eligibility period is reached for those who hold pre-settled status and have no “suitability issues”. EU citizens currently have to submit a further application to move to the permanent status.
Automatically issuing this upgrade would “save costs to the Home Office, the court system, the DWP and other government departments… [and] would give people peace of mind and access to their rights, while freeing up resources to process late applications efficiently”, the missive says.
The new government is also encouraged to “change the approach to late applications to the EU Settlement Scheme to ensure that people who are eligible for status under the scheme are not prevented from accessing that status simply because they applied late”.
The letter notes that “many of the late applicants are people who have lived in the UK for decades and are clearly eligible for status, [and] most simply don’t realise that they need to apply, or that the scheme applies to them, until a life event triggers their awareness”.
“This includes vulnerable individuals,” it says. “They are genuine applicants, and the UK is their home. They should not be penalised for not having applied before the deadline. The rules around late applications must be urgently changed to prevent a repeat of the Windrush disaster.”
