INTERVIEW/Ambassador Noble says point-based immigration system doesn't affect Romanians registered in settled scheme

The point-based immigration system to be applied in the UK does not affect Romanians and the rest of EU citizens who have registered for special status, in settled or pre-settled schemes, but those who want to live in the Kingdom next year, when the post-Brexit transition period expires, British Ambassador in Bucharest Andrew Noble told an interview with AGERPRES. "The great majority of skilled workers will have no difficulty getting through this system which is more onerous than a system of free movement, but the Government is clear: free movement must end. This is the way the needs of our economy will so be met, but I think you'll find that the needs of Romanians who wish to emigrate and live in the UK will also be met," said the diplomat. According to a document outlining the plans of the Government in London, EU citizens with a qualification in the job can register to settle in the UK, from 1 January 2021, if they accumulate at least 70 points, granted for criteria, such as qualification in work, education, if they already have an employer in the United Kingdom and if they have a guaranteed minimum income. Andrew Noble said that this system has long been thought of by the British Government, and the data in the political document published on February 19 are "largely outlined". "But this is, as you say, a policy paper, this is not the implementation document. There's a chance some of the details may change between now and the implementation date of the 1st of January. And I don't know what that might be, but it's not absolutely what the reality will be like at the end of this year," Noble pointed out. AGERPRES: Mr. Ambassador, the Government of the United Kingdom recently published a policy paper regarding the point-based immigration policy. Could talk a little about this, especially about, I quote from that policy paper: "this policy aims to attract people that will contribute to the UK's economy"? Andrew Noble: This has been expected for a very long time. The government has made clear for well over a year that, as soon as we left the European Union, and at the end of the transition period that there will be a new points-based system, loosely based on the Australian model. And that's now the policy paper this has come out. It is still something that is being developed, that is, it gives the main lines of the policy, it hasn't told us the exact details of how it will be achieved.The most important thing to say, I think, especially in Romania, is that this is the immigration policy for people who want to come and live in the UK. So, it is not important for the Romanians who are already registered in settled or pre-settled scheme in the UK. All their rights are guaranteed by the withdrawal agreement, for life. It doesn't apply to visitors to the UK. You will be able to go as an ordinary tourist or as an ordinary business visitor and stay for the usual amount of time before you're looked at as being an immigrant. So, with that, I think already we have decided de facto that it doesn't apply to the great majority of Romanians, who will either be living in the UK as residents or just travelling. For those who wish to go to and live there will be a new system, in which they need to apply, there will be various categories, special rules will apply to it. The great majority of skilled workers will have no difficulty getting through this system which is more onerous than a system of free movement, but the Government is clear: free movement must end. This is the way the needs of our economy will so be met, but I think you'll find that the needs of Romanians who wish to emigrate and live in the UK will also be met. AGERPRES: Still you were talking about the Romanians in the UK and I think there are quite some seasonal workers. In the policy paper it specified that there will be a visa pilot scheme for seasonal workers. Can you give us an outline for this? Will it be more complicated for them to navigate through this system? Andrew Noble: The pilot takes place in 2020, a time in which any Romanian who wishes to go to the UK can do so, including seasonal agricultural workers. This year, the pilot scheme doesn't apply to Romanians who have much greater freedom. We expect it to apply from next year, but this a pilot scheme. We've increased the numbers by four times in 2020, but what numbers will be in 2021, we do not yet know. AGERPRES: It is also specified that the point system could also be applied to students. How will this be applied? Students usually were relying on the fact they were going to the Great Britain, they were relying on a scholarship, on a more flexible system than this. Andrew Noble: It was a more open system because in free movement any Romanian could go to the UK for any purpose, at anytime. This is much clearer: students need to have an offer from an educational establishment, they need to demonstrate they have the level of English and they need to demonstrate that they can support themselves in the UK. These are very normal requirements for any emigration system. And then they will be able to apply under the points-based system. Our intention is that they we will grow the number of international students in British universities by a very considerable factor. I think it is important to look at what the Government's intention is. If we are going to increase the number of international students, it has to be a system which already applies to much of the rest of the world, that actually facilitates that. I have great confidence that Romanian students, in the future, are not going to face difficulties. But again, I need to emphasize that this does not apply until the academic intake at the end of 2021. Because for students who wish to start their studies in 2020, in the academic year 2020-2021, they will still qualify as homes students with access to government funding on the bases they have enjoyed. So, again, the new scheme will only kick in the academic year that begins in September 2021. AGERPRES: You were talking about the settled status and pre-settled status that EU citizens living in the UK already got. I've talked to Romanians who got the pre-settled status or the settled status, and their concern was that this status is very volatile. They don't have a paper with it, they don't have anything. Did you heard about this concern and how do you address it? Andrew Noble: I've heard about that concern a lot and at a certain level I understand it, and at a certain level I share it, because, for certain government services in the UK, I do not have a piece of paper either. It's partly driven by our environmental concerns. Why produce loads of bits of plastic that they are going to end up in the sea? To abbreviate the process. There is a huge awareness about making the way that we live sustainable. So, the other thing is to improve access to government services and almost all government services now in the UK are accessible online. And we have moved to an online world, and there is interconnectivity, which makes life very straightforward. The same applies to the registration scheme for settled and pre-settled. In the UK, I don't have an ID document, I don't have a registration requirement to tell the police where I live or where I've moved to. And that is our inherent freedoms of living in the United Kingdom. And the requirements to have a piece of paper to say 'This is who I am, these are my rights!' is very much against the British way of life, that is still very very valued. Actually what we are doing is treating registered EU citizen population in exactly the same way as we treat the British population. We're not treating them differently. I understand if you're coming from a country like Romania where there is a very low level of government service provided online it's a shock, it's not comfortable. But it works. I see how it works in my everyday requirements with the UK, whether I'm registering a car or whether I'm doing my NHS prescription charges or whatever. None of that generates a piece of plastic. So, I understand the concern, but I don't think there is a real problem about it. AGERPRES: And also I was talking to Romanian citizens who have the settled status in the UK and they say that because of various reasons, they did not apply for British citizenship. But what about now with Brexit, will there be a surge in applying for British citizenship, in case they meet the conditions, but they did not bothered to ask for it? Andrew Noble: I find it impossible to tell you whether there is going to be a surge or not. Believe it or not, I don't know how many Romanians have already got British citizenship. It's something that we are exploring, but it's not something that is routinely fed to embassies. Will it be a surge, I think it is extremely difficult to say. Clearly, being a British citizen is one thing, having the permanent rights, the settled status scheme gives you is clearly another, but it's already very, very good indeed. I don't know that the development there is going to be, the really important thing - and I hope everybody listening to this will talk to their relatives who are in the UK or all those who will still go - to settle in the UK under the settled or pre-settled status scheme you don't have to be there yet, you can arrive even as late as 31 of December this year, and, as long as you can demonstrate that you were a resident by 31 of December this year, you can still qualify under the settlement scheme. So, whether those people will or not in the future ask for citizenship I really don't now. AGERPRES: At the end of the policy paper published on the UK Government there is a study quoted and it says that under the recent conditions, about 70 pct of the European Economic Area citizens who have arrived in the UK since 2004 would have not been eligible for these particular conditions? By the immigration point status. Andrew Noble: I'm afraid I haven't focused on that. I don't know which study you're referring to. AGERPRES: It's right at the end of it where it says there has been a study according to which under the recent conditions implied by the immigration point status about 70 pct of the European Economic Area would have been ineligible for being in the UK. Would you comment on this? Would it reflect on the workforce from the EU in the UK? Andrew Noble: I suspect that's true, because under free movement, you could as a Romanian 17-year-old decide that you wanted to go to school in the UK. So far, I don't think there's a proposal for people who want to go to school. Or you could just go on holiday and actually decide to take work. What this scheme requires is that you have the job offer, you have to place to study at the university. And it's fundamentally looking at economically active people. It's much more difficult under the future for people of pensionable age, for example, to go and live in the UK. This is a difference, this is a different policy, it's intended to have a different impact, the ending of free movement of labor which is what the EU provision is supposed to be about but in reality is free movement of people. But we're actually going back to a much more labor focused immigration system which is what the EU scheme should in itself be. So I'm not surprised at those gross figures. What I have to say though is that, even if at the point of entry there was a large proportion of people who would not have qualified under this scheme, very shortly after they went they would have. In a way, in the old system you could go to the UK, have thinking time, and then meet the sort of criteria that we've established in this policy paper. Under the policy paper, you have to have thinking time here, which is a lot cheaper than thinking time in the UK. I think the ultimate outcome might not be very different. And certainly, in respect to students, we've got about 10,000 Romanian students at the moment. With the rate of growth the UK government wishes to achieve in international students it's difficult to see how we'll get to our target figure without that number of 10,000 Romanian students going up. AGERPRES: The policy paper also specifies that this particular point-based immigration system, will have benefits, of course, but it will also have costs. Can you foresee what the costs of this point-based immigration system would be? Andrew Noble: I think the main costs discussed are the costs of implementing it. And I would expect the costs to be met from the beneficiaries, so those who will benefit from it will contribute significantly towards its costs. Which is what already happens. British citizens' passports include a fee to help pay for consular systems overseas. People who nowadays need a visa - the visa fee sustains the visa service and I would expect that to be continued. But this is, as you say, a policy paper, this is not the implementation document. There's a chance some of the details may change between now and the implementation date of the 1st of January. And I don't know what that might be, but it's not absolutely what the reality will be like at the end of this year. AGERPRES: In the context of Brexit, it's a premiere that the UK has a magistrate liaison in Romania. Could you talk about this? How will he analyze the rule of law, I guess, in Romania? What are the outlines of his job? Andrew Noble: First point is he is not going to be part of the embassy team analyzing the rule of law in Romania. That's done by other teams within the embassy who are looking at the internal governance of Romania and our political relationship. Our liaison magistrate, John Williams, is there to be a link, a liaison, between our court systems. This is part of our law enforcement work which is huge. We've got 50 Romanian policemen with us this week focusing on how UK and Romania can work better to prevent the sexual exploitation of children. So, we're already doing a lot on law enforcement and John is there to link the court systems and the prison systems. So, he will be shuttling backwards and forwards from his desk, understanding Romanian requirements and British requirements, and giving advice on how they can best be met. We had visitors this week from the central authority in the UK - the organization in the UK who receive Romanian requests of British legal and penal system and implement these requests in the UK. So they've been here to understand what Romanians would like our system to do better and to tell them how really high quality we think the Romanian paperwork already is. So John's job is about taking an already very high quality level of cooperation to an even higher level. There have been issues on past extraditions, for example about prison conditions in Romania, and as you probably know, in the European Court of Human Rights there are a lot of Romanian cases relating to prison conditions. There are answers to that, that doesn't need to be the blockage to extradition of offenders back to Romania, as it has been in the past. And that's one of the big things the liaison magistrate will help with - just smoothing out two different systems, to produce the joint objective of reducing the criminality in our two counties, and it exists between our two countries in both directions. This is not an issue of the Romanian criminals in the UK only, it's also about British criminals in Romania. It's a very shared problem and solutions are getting easier with a department of a liaison magistrate. AGERPRES: Next week, there will be negotiations starting between the EU and the UK about the trade deal. In non-bureaucratic terms, what are the UK's fears and hopes before negotiations? Andrew Noble: I'm not sure that I got fears. The hope is that it will produce, under a lot of time pressure, an arrangement which enables us to trade easily between the EU and the UK in goods and services, and that many other components of our life together in the EU, the areas that we both prioritize, that we can find easy agreements for those to be maintained and to move forwards. It is a very short time frame, that's clear, but with the right sort of political will and with a right understanding on both sides of what it is in the real world that people want to achieve, I think that under those circumstances we can certainly achieve a very good deal for all our citizens going forwards. AGERPRES: Do you believe the EU and the UK have reached a better level of mutual understanding after so many discussions before Brexit? Do you feel that there is more understanding between Brussels and London now? Andrew Noble: I think increasing understanding is demonstrated by the fact that we eventually got to a withdrawal agreement that both sides could support. We had not been in that position for quite some time. The inability of the House of Commons to support previous versions of the withdrawal agreement were demonstration that we hadn't gone quite far enough. We did get that far at the end of the year. The withdrawal agreement has provided a really good basis for our citizens to continue with their lives and now we are looking forward to re-establishing components of the relationship in a whole number of dossiers. The fact that the Agreement continues in this transition year, [means] we don't need to find a new basis for that. So my hopes far outweigh my fears. I don't really believe that the EU and the UK, two such important partners, I doubt that they can ignore the real practical advantages their citizens need. And if they do, I think we'll have to say to our negotiators "Try a bit harder!", because this is what we need, as member states, as ordinary citizens of Europe. AGERPRES (RO - author: Oana Ghita, editor: Mirela Barbulescu; EN - authors: Simona Iacob, Bogdan Gabaroi, Razvan-Adrian Pandea, Simona Klodnischi, editor: Rodica State)