Migrant criminals could win right to stay after Brexit
They WON’T face global police records checks
INTERNATIONAL criminal record checks will not be carried out routinely on EU citizens hoping to stay in the UK after Brexit, the Government admitted yesterday.
Instead, their names will only be screened against UK police and security databases.
Only if there is ‘good cause’ to suspect a person has a hidden criminal history abroad will checks be done overseas. It raises the prospect that dangerous EU criminals, including killers, rapists and drug lords, will not be identified when they apply for the right to live here permanently – potentially putting the public at risk.
Ministers faced criticism that they had caved in after the european Parliament threatened to block Brexit talks, due to begin again tomorrow, unless ‘ invasive’ criminal record checks were blocked.
Britain has pledged to grant 3.2million eU citizens who have lived in the UK lawfully for at least five years ‘settled status’ – giving them full access to schools, hospitals, pensions and benefits. This can be transferred into citizenship at a later date.
Ministers said in June that applicants would face criminal record checks to exclude those who are ‘serious or persistent criminals and those whom we consider a threat to the UK’.
But the extent of the screening was revealed yesterday and the ‘ intention’ is to ask applicants to ‘self- declare’ criminal convictions, either in the UK or overseas, in line with immigration rules for NON-EU citizens.
It said: ‘We will check appropriate UK biographic criminal records databases. In specified cases, where we have good cause, we may seek to verify international declared convictions or identify any international criminality.’
Tory MP Peter Bone, a key Brexiteer, acknowledged the huge task of checking the criminal records of the millions of eU citizens here, but warned: ‘We have got to do as much as possible to protect the public from having foreign criminals here.’
If they have a criminal record, the foreign national could be deported as long as they pose ‘a genuine, present and sufficiently serious threat’ to society and the public – a much higher threshold than for non-eU criminals.
eU citizens who have lived in the UK for more than five years may be removed only on ‘serious grounds of public policy and public security’.
More than ten years of residency requires ‘ imperative grounds of public security’. In a notorious case, Latvian builder Arnis Zalkalns was allowed into the UK unchecked despite having served seven years in jail in his home country for killing his wife. He moved here in 2007 and went on to murder 14-year-old Alice Gross in August 2014.
In July, the eU warned that stringent criminal records checks would not be acceptable – claiming it would represent a widespread breach of human rights. Checks should only be carried out where there was suspicion of a criminal history – a position closer to the new one laid out by Britain.
elsewhere, the paper says it will be easier to deport eU criminals after Brexit, with ministers ditching Brussels rules exploited by offenders.
Citizens from elsewhere in the world who are jailed for more than 12 months face automatic deportation.
Those from the eU will be treated in the same way.
The tough line emerged despite objections from european negotiators who want eU citizens in Britain to retain all their current rights.
The paper also sets out measures to streamline the process of applying for ‘settled status’. Officials will be told not to turn down applications over minor technicalities and to adopt a ‘pragmatic’ approach, for instance not requiring applicants to account for every trip they may have taken into and out of the UK in the five-year period.
But the new proposals fall short of offering the european Court of Justice jurisdiction over citizens’ post-Brexit rights that the eU is seeking.
Home Secretary Amber Rudd said: ‘eU citizens in the UK make an enormous contribution to our country and we want them to stay. We know that there is some anxiety among eU citizens about how the process of applying for settled status will work so I hope this document provides reassurance.’
‘Offenders asked to self-declare’