The future of around 3.6 million EU nationals in a post-Brexit Britain hinges on the upkeep of a vast government database. This database will determine who has been granted settled status, and has therefore the right to stay in Britain indefinitely. If the database says no, you risk being deported. It must be a really watertight database then, right?
The need for such a database is acute. The British government has made it clear that freedom of movement of European citizens to the UK will come to an end after Brexit, whatever shape it takes. Once (or if) the UK leaves the European Union, EU citizens who wish to rent a house, work or even receive medical treatment will have to ensure that their details on the database – phone number, email address, passport number, and address – are up to date in order to prove their settled status.
Despite its crucial role in guaranteeing the rights of millions of people, it is feared that this settled status database – which will need to remain in operation for decades – will degrade as not everyone will diligently keep their details up to date. “People are likely to have to depend on this for the rest of their lives,” says Phil Booth, a veteran of the mid-noughties NO2ID campaign against the Blair government’s attempt to introduce a national ID card system. “There will be errors to do with data quality, and there'll be errors to do with data-matching or failures to match.”
The consequences of such failures would be dire. Nicole Wevers, a political activists working for The3Million, a campaign group supporting EU citizens living in the UK predicts that we could soon be facing “Windrush on steroids”. The Windrush Scandal, whose scale was exposed in the pages of The Guardian in 2018, uncovered how the Home Office wrongfully deported 83 members of the “Windrush generation” hailing mostly from the Caribbean, all of whom had a legal right to live in Britain. That happened because some of those people lacked documents proving their status – in their case, because when they initially travelled to Britain, they did not require specific documentation. If EU citizens’ status is not correctly recorded in the government’s settled status database, the same could happen post-Brexit.
That is not the only criticism faced by the settled status scheme: since it was launched, in January 2019, the system has faced serious questions about the design and implementation of the technology behind it. The most common method to apply for settled status is through an Android app that verifies an EU national's identity, allowing the government to verify how long they have lived in the UK by automatically cross-checking their personal details against data held by HMRC and the Department for Work and Pensions. Those automated checks help a human caseworker verify whether the applicant has been here for five years or longer, in which case they get full settled status – essentially, the right to permanently remain in the UK. If they’ve been here for less time, they are only granted pre-settled status, which only allows them to stay until they reach the five year milestone, at which point they can apply for full status.
Campaigners have criticised the way the system is designed. “If the [app’s] algorithm says ‘no’, there's no ability to see what factors were considered and what weighting was given to those factors – all the traditional things that you'd look at when you consider if a decision was reasonable and rational,” says Amy Shepherd from the Open Rights Group. “Then it becomes more and more difficult to challenge decisions and overturn the status given to you.” In an email following the publication of this story, a Home Office spokesperson said that the algorithm itself is not in charge of the final decision – the caseworker is. Al the same, it is not possible for applicants to know specifically how the decision on their status has been reached and what factors were considered.
Booth views the settled status system's makeup as a prosecution of the “hostile environment” policy inaugurated by the Home Office under Theresa May. “There is a simple question that they could ask at the beginning of the process,” says Booth, “‘What status do you expect to receive?’” If this were asked, it would practically act as a verification check the government could use to spot systematic errors with the statuses that are being automatically granted. By comparing the expected status with the one granted, it would provide the government with evidence on whether the system is working.
Pre-settled status, which is bound to expire unless replaced with full settled status once the applicant has clocked five years of uninterrupted UK residence, is one potential source of trouble.The way the system is designed is that if the algorithm does not grant full settled status, applicants are offered the chance to upload other documents demonstrating their continued residency. But Wevers says she has received anecdotal reports of problems. “[Some applicants] get to that stage, and they get so worried that they're going to get rejected, that they don't go on and actually send any extra information and just accept pre-settled status,” she says. If they then don’t follow through and upgrade their status, they will risk losing residency rights in the future.
One vulnerable group that could be particularly badly hit are the estimated 5,000 international children currently in care in the UK. “When families break down, documents like that [needed to confirm one is entitled to settled status] are the first things to get lost,” says Marianne LeGrue from Coram Children’s Legal Centre. This could mean that kids who do not receive the correct status now could be hit later in life, as the Home Office won’t hold the correct information on them – exactly as it happened with Windrush.
So what’s the solution, other than relying on a government database? Is there a high-tech solution? Perhaps something sophisticated using the blockchain? The answer is somewhat ironic given Booth’s past at NO2ID. “We're fighting so hard to get a physical ID card of some sort,” says Wevers, “Something that you can hold in your hand and say ‘I'm entitled to settled status or pre-settled status’.”
“The human systems that we have built around paper are actually far more sophisticated and robust than most people give credit to,” says Booth.
The thinking is that a physical card will ultimately prove more enduring than a government database. EU citizens would be able to use it as proof of their residency status, with no risks that a database could later through either incompetence or malice deny them their rights. So perhaps for EU citizens, the real way to build a robust settled status system is decidedly more low-tech.
In an emailed statement, a Home Office spokesperson said: "EU citizens are our friends, families and neighbours and we want them to stay. The EU Settlement Scheme makes it easy for them to get the UK immigration status they need. It’s free, simple and provides them with a secure digital status which can’t be lost or stolen."
“We use automated government checks to confirm five years’ residence for the majority of applicants without them having to provide further evidence. However, individuals can upload further evidence if needed. Applicants can apply from home with our identity verification app, which uses face matching technology. More than 1.5 million ID documents have been verified using the app and we are the only government globally to enable remote identity verification in this way using the applicant’s smartphone.”
*Updated 09.10.2019, 14.51 GMT: This article has been amended to add the Home Office's response and clarify that a human caseworker is also involved in the process of granting settled status.
Updated 09.10.2019, 16.10 GMT: This article has been updated to add the Home Office's statement*
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
