14:57

The immigration minister, Brandon Lewis, confirmed that freedom of movement will end in March 2019 at an Institute for Government fringe and gave a new timeline for post-Brexit immigration policy.

Following the Guardian leak of an August draft the government’s white paper on post-Brexit immigration policy, which had been expected early this month, has now delayed until “late autumn”, he said.

The white paper will followed by an framework immigration bill in the new year but Lewis made clear that the meat of the new approach to EU migrants will not become clear until secondary legislation is published next autumn, after the migration advisory committee reports on the impact of migrant labour on the UK market and students.

This means that the crucial detail of the new immigration policy will not become clear until a few months before Brexit in March 2019 and at the fringe meeting Bronwen Maddox of the Institute for Government said she was “very sceptical” that even that timetable would be met.

The minister also twice referred to the “compliant environment” rather the previous Home Office term of ‘hostile environment” to tackle illegal immigration, suggesting that the term has now been rebranded because it is gaining a toxic reputation.

Lewis also tried to play down the scale of recent mistakes made by the Home Office by claiming that most of those reported in the press involved “cases on which the Home Office could not comment” and so were only side of the story. He said had personally written apologies the next day to all the 100 EU nationals who had mistakenly been told to leave the country this summer.