Brexit: Millions of EU citizens may have to post passports to Home Office to gain right to stay in UK

They will also be hit with a £65 charge for going through the process to confirm their rights

Millions of EU citizens living in Britain face having to post their passports to the Home Office to gain the right to remain after Brexit, under plans unveiled on Thursday.

Some 3.5 million EU nationals must prove their identity to gain “settled status”, but large numbers will be unable to complete the whole process digitally.

They will also be hit with a £65 fee to go through the process, while there will be a £32 charge for children, government sources confirmed.

Ministers have set aside some £300m to operate the system to redefine the status of EU citizens who currently have full rights to stay here anyway, while insiders admit the costs could rise even higher.

Home Secretary Sajid Javid was set to take questions on Thursday over the issue of how EU citizens already in the UK will be treated post-withdrawal, a key point of contention in Brexit negotiations.

But senior EU figures were already raising concerns about the burden it may place on Europeans in the UK, who were not permitted a vote in the 2016 referendum. There are also question marks over what happens if Brexit negotiations collapse.

Confirmation of how the application process works will at least bring a degree of comfort to EU citizens in Britain, whose lives have been cast into uncertainty since the vote.

It will see people having to go through a three-stage application – first checking their identity, then confirming their eligibility and finally checking their “suitability”, or whether or not they have a criminal record.

Most people will be able to complete most of the application online, but during the first stage they will have to provide the government with proof of identity, generally a passport.

While officials have set up an app for people to scan passports and send details to the Home Office digitally, it will only work on android devices which are owned by just a third of the UK population.

The Independent understands officials are “exploring options” to enable people to attend a location to verify their identity, but for most people it will mean sending a passport in.

Figures released via a Freedom of Information request from 2016 suggest the number of passports sent to or from the government which are lost in the post have skyrocketed in recent years, with some 600 going missing annually. Officials stressed that they believed the approach was secure.

The Brexit co-ordinator of the European Parliament, Guy Verhofstadt, repeated demands for EU citizens to be permitted to go through the process for free on Thursday.

He said: “Why should EU citizens, who have contributed to British society and paid their taxes, be financially punished for Brexit, when they were denied a vote?

“[The European Parliament] has serious concerns on this. But also on lack of preparation for UK expats on the continent.”

The Home Office has already taken on 1,000 of the total 1,500 new workers it believes will be needed to administer the scheme.

Around £170m has been set aside for designing it and the new workers, with the remainder of the £300m used up through its operation.

But officials admit that the fees for the application are unlikely to cover the full cost and that additional public funds may be needed by the time the scheme is complete – though no figure could be put on it at this point.

None the less, civil servants are optimistic that for most people the process will be broadly complete in a few days – setting aside the issue of when applicants may get their passport back.

Under the scheme, to be launched later this year, anyone who has been in the UK for five years will be offered “settled status” after Brexit, meaning they can stay living and working in the country as before.

Those who have been here less than five years will be granted “pre-settled” status and be allowed to stay here until they have reached the five year threshold for gaining settled status.

Anyone who arrives in the UK up to December 2020, the end of the Brexit ‘transition period’, will likely be granted “pre-settled” status and – like those with settled status – will be able to bring over close family members including existing spouses, children parents and grandparents. Those entering an application at the end of the transition period will have until June 2021 to complete it.

The online application will in many cases see the individual having to provide no additional evidence of their previous residency, with the government committing to automatically check HMRC and DWP databases to itself confirm how long have been in the country.

Sources at the Home Office have emphasised there will be a high level of digital and face-to-face guidance for those that need it, and say the underlying ethos is that they will be “looking for reasons to say yes”, with officials given leeway to rule in citizens’ favour.

But there was doubt over what will happen if the Brexit negotiations collapse, a growing possibility. As it stands the scheme will only come into play if the existing draft withdrawal agreement is ratified.

Ms May has given verbal assurances however that no EU citizen will have to leave the country regardless of what happens.

It comes after Mr Javid accused EU countries of not doing enough to support British nationals living on the continent, ahead of the UK publishing details of its own plan.