[pknight]

Patel's stated intentions imply the extension of all of the hostile environment measures. She wants to end freedom of movement instantly, even though it had been presumed to be effectively applied for an interim period even with no deal and no transition. She wants to explicitly kill the notion of a grace period, which had been presumed to apply before.

The reporting is light on details, because the 'how' has not been drawn up yet. What has been newly decided is to immediately kill freedom of movement in practice. And the UK does most of its border controls behind the border, by making landlords, banks, hospitals and doctors do checks. Even if what Patel means to implement is purely what border officials at airports do to check people's status as they come in (and I very much doubt this is all she intends), it reinforces the message to employers, health service providers, banks and landlords that EU nationals are a higher liability if they turn out not to have the required status. The Govt may very well even advise landlords for instance that they won't hold them to account with the usual criminal penalties for accidentally renting to a EU national without settled status or other valid migration status, many landlords will simply eschew EU nationals going forward because it's safer. Messaging like this underlines that a EU ID is no longer a sufficient signal that a person is in all likelihood a legal resident and that a tough line is meant to be taken against EU nationals.