Britain should seek to rejoin EU, says civil servant who led Brexit department | Brexit

Britain should start talking about rejoining the EU, according to a former senior civil servant who led the Brexit department.

Philip Rycroft, permanent secretary at the Office for Exiting the EU, said “the debate is something that needs to be won” on returning to Europe, adding that “an open-minded assessment of what is in the best interests of the country” was required. But he said rejoining the bloc could be a “long and windy” road.

“Most economic analysis shows that we have taken a significant hit to GDP as a result of leaving the single market,” he wrote. Times. “The exact figure and its impact on our export performance to the EU and beyond may be subject to debate, but no one can credibly claim that we are marching towards the sunny hills of sustainable economic growth as a result of Brexit.”

Rycroft said the Brexit campaign’s promises on issues from the economy to immigration did not meet expectations. “The great promise of a comprehensive trade agreement with the United States now looks like an impossible dream,” he said.

“The cold winds are not just blowing on the international trade order. The post-war certainties that underpinned our security as a nation are visibly collapsing. With a hot war being waged on the European mainland by a vengeful Russia and an increasingly disengaged America, we are unlikely to look to solidarity with our friends and neighbors in Europe to secure our defence.”

He concluded: “The debate is there to be won. It is time to talk about rejoining. It may be time to knock on the door of the EU.”

Rycroft’s comments reflect a growing mood that Labor needs to be bolder in approaching the EU or rejoining it in the future. Some cabinet ministers want Keir Starmer to push harder on joining the customs union or single market, which are still red lines for the government as it seeks a stronger post-Brexit relationship with the EU.

In January the prime minister said the UK should consider “even closer alignment” with the single market, preferable to a customs union. “If this is in our national interest… then we should consider it, we should go this far,” he said.

Concerns about EU citizens in the UK and British citizens in Europe after Brexit were expressed in the European Parliament on Thursday. MEPs have heard concerns about the rights of children born in the UK to EU citizens but who do not know they need to apply for settled status.

They could face charges from the NHS or questions about their future employability, Parliament heard. A senior official from the European Commission’s post-withdrawal deal body said: “The UK approach has significant consequences for newborn children, leading to very high healthcare costs.”

The Home Office was criticized at a European Parliament hearing in which it attended for ending funding to charities helping vulnerable EU citizens who applied for a settlement late.

One of the charities, Settled, will say in a report to be published next week that it sees “hundreds of requests for advice every week” but no longer receives funding from the Home Office.

Britons in Europe, a grassroots coalition campaigning for the rights of around 1.2 million Britons living in the EU across 27 countries, told parliament it had not received funding from the UK. Despite being one of the European Commission’s interlocutors on Brexit, its directors Fiona Godfrey and Jane Golding are now working without pay.

“We are all here voluntarily,” they said. “We are also calling on the British government to fund the work that needs to be done to support British citizens living in the EU, because this has not yet happened.”