UK minister: free movement of labour ends after Brexit

“Free movement of labour ends when we leave the European Union in the spring of 2019,” Lewis told public broadcaster BBC on Thursday.

“We’re very clear that free movement ends. It’s part of the four key principles of the European Union. When we leave, it therefore – by definition – ends,” Lewis added.

But on Wednesday, British Home Secretary Amber Rudd was cited by the Financial Times daily as saying that she would not close the door to European workers after Brexit.

“We must keep attracting the brightest and best migrants from around the world,” the Financial Times quoted Rudd as saying.

Lewis told the BBC that “a new system of immigration” would be in place before Brexit as the UK has a “long term aim” of reducing migration from nearly 250,000 to “sustainable levels” of “tens of thousands” but did not place a time frame on the target.

Some three million EU nationals, among them about 800,000 Poles, live in the UK.

Warsaw has repeatedly requested post-Brexit guarantees for Polish nationals living in Britain.

British Prime Minister Theresa May in June made what she called a “fair offer”, saying that EU citizens who had lived in Britain for five years would be entitled to healthcare, education, welfare and pensions, just like a UK national.

She also promised that no EU citizen in the UK at the time of Britain’s divorce from the bloc, scheduled for April 2019, would be deported immediately.

May said her offer “aimed at giving as much certainty as possible to citizens who have settled in the UK, building careers and lives, and contributing so much to our society”.

Austrian Chancellor Christian Kern said May's offer "is a first good step which we appreciate” but German Chancellor Angela Merkel said that many questions remained. (vb/pk)