No-Deal Brexit Won't Spur Immediate Hiring Checks for U.K. Plc

(Bloomberg) -- U.K. employers won’t have to change the way they hire European Union citizens in the immediate aftermath of a no-deal Brexit, Home Secretary Sajid Javid said Wednesday.

“If there was a no deal, then we won’t be able to immediately distinguish between those Europeans that were already here before March 29 and those that came after, and therefore as a result I wouldn’t expect employers to do anything different than they do today,” Javid said in an interview on ITV’s “Peston” show.

The U.K. has said Europeans arriving in Britain after Brexit, scheduled for March 29, will have to register with the Home Office, though if they arrive during a scheduled transition period that ends in December 2020, they’ll still be able to apply for settled status. But should Britain tumble out of the bloc in March without securing a deal, they’ll have different rights to stay and work.

Javid said there would need to be “some kind of sensible transition period” before different requirements were imposed on employers to check the arrival dates of new EU employees. Asked how long that would be, he said “we’re going to set it out in a few weeks time.”

To contact the reporter on this story: Alex Morales in London at amorales2@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Flavia Krause-Jackson at fjackson@bloomberg.net, Robert Jameson

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