Thread by @jameschappers

UK confirming plan to compel millions of citizens to pay to apply to keep legally established rights feels important and unprecedented. But barely a media ripple today - with a few honourable exceptions noone appears to be asking tough questions. So here are a few:

1. How is this scheme compatible with Article 8 of the ECHR, enshrined in UK law via Human Rights Act, protecting right to family life? Has Govt taken legal advice on prospects of a challenge by EU citizens? If so what did it say?

2. Why should EU citizens have to pay a fee for confirmation of existing rights legally and properly exercised?

3. EU citizens in the UK were promised their lives would continue "as before". But isn’t settled status a lesser status that they need to apply, qualify & pay for?

4. What are the penalties for non compliance?
What will Home Office do if EU citizens boycott the scheme en masse?

5. The Home Office will have to process over 4,000 applications per day for the scheme to operate smoothly - way more than numbers achieved during trials. Have sufficient extra staff been employed and trained?

6. What are EU citizens with an iPhone and no access to an Android device expected to do? Will they have to travel up to 250 miles to one of a small number of centres where they can scan documents?

7. Has Home Office considered the possibility of applications by UK citizens who consider themselves EU citizens in order to disrupt the scheme?

8. Given rights of workers are supposed to be guaranteed in Article 24 of withdrawal agreement, how is a scheme that checks UK residence compatible with preserving rights of “frontier workers” who work in 1 member state but regard their permanent residence as being in another?

9. Did Govt consider spouses of UK citizens being automatically granted existing rights? Wouldn’t this have streamlined the system considerably?

10. (one more, a bit leftfield, that just occurred to me) Has Govt taken advice on whether UK citizens who actively want to apply for EU settled status would have any sort of legal claim that refusing them would be discriminatory?