Today's leading stories include a Financial Times piece on EU Settlement Scheme statistics and a Home Secretary editorial for the Express on how the Home Office is working to ensure the safety of our police officers.
EU Settlement Scheme statistics
Official EU Settlement Scheme statistics could be rendered “meaningless” because of the number of repeat applications, the Financial Times reports.
The report notes that the 2 million applications received also include applications from people who reapply to upgrade their status from pre-settled to settled.
It quotes academic Kuba Jablonowski, who works for the citizens’ rights group the3million, as saying: “We no longer know how many people exactly applied to the scheme.”
The FT adds that the problem could make it difficult to assess how many of an estimated 3.6m EU citizens in the UK have secured their right to stay after Brexit.
A Home Office spokesperson said:
We regularly publish statistics on the EU Settlement Scheme which contain an accurate record of all applications.
It’s right that every application is counted because each application has a separate outcome. However, our initial analysis of internal figures suggest that repeat applications currently represent less than 0.5% of applications.
Our latest published statistics to the end of September 2019 show that the EU Settlement Scheme is performing well with more than 1.8 million applications received and more than 1.5 million applications concluded.
Police protection
The Express carries an op-ed by the Home Secretary in which a number of measures to protect police in the line of duty are outlined.
In the piece, the Home Secretary highlights the Police Protection Bill and the proposed establishment of a Police Covenant.
Police will also receive an additional £10 million for Tasers, £20 million to tackle county lines and £25 million for a Safer Streets Fund, the op-ed adds.
The Home Secretary tells police: “We hear you and we will give you the tools you need to do your job.”
In a separate news piece, Chairman of the Police Federation John Apter said that the death of PC Andrew Harper had really brought home for many police officers how dangerous their jobs are.
The Home Secretary's piece can be read here: https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/1196426/police-killed-Andrew-harper