Thousands ‘could lose the right to stay in UK’

Tens of thousands of EU migrants could lose their right to be in the UK after Brexit without showing up in official data, according to a new report.

It warned that unless the government has a clear plan for measuring whether EU nationals living in the country have received “settled status”, the precise number who fall through the gap may never be known.

The paper from the Migration Observatory at the University of Oxford said that based on currently available statistics, it will not be easy to calculate exactly how many miss out unless the numbers are very large.

“This is because we do not have precise figures on how many EU citizens are living in the UK and plan to stay,” the report said.

“It is possible that tens of thousands of EU citizens living in the UK could lose their legal status without this being clear from the data.”

Later this year the government will launch an online application system for EU nationals seeking to remain in the UK.