Theresa May cares about me and a million more people like me – British citizens who, before Brexit, chose to make their lives in Europe. There are, however, only two reasons why I know this. One is that the prime minister has repeatedly said so. The other is that three million Europeans who live in the United Kingdom are being held ransom on my behalf, forced to endure the stress and chronic uncertainty inflicted on those “displaced” by the new wall being erected in Europe.

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Aside from these two things, evidence is glaringly absent. Government shows no sign that it understands who we really are. Nor has it displayed much interest in finding out. And it still has not stated how it proposes to fix the ghastly limbo into which one million UK citizens were plunged the day after the referendum. Instead, it hides behind the excuse that it can do, and say, nothing until negotiations start. Yet this is not true. Important matters that have nothing to do with other EU states can be fixed immediately. Two hundred thousand fearful retirees, some of them poor and vulnerable, can attest to that. They want to know whether their pensions will be frozen for ever and gradually eaten away by inflation – as currently happens to UK pensioners who retire to most non-EU countries. The government has had seven months to calm their fears. It has chosen not to. That is, at best, lazy. At worst, it is cynical and callous.

Three government departments have been unable to tell me why this has not been settled already. The obvious suspicion is that the real plan is to use Brexit to claw back pension payments, effectively punishing those who moved to the EU in the secure belief that this would never happen to them. Kelly Hall, from Birmingham University, who is following Brexit on the ground in southern Spain, says that for the many people scraping by on small state pensions, the worry is contributing to ill health, depression and anxiety. “This is the one thing they can resolve now,” one pensioner told me recently in Malaga. He is right. May’s pledge of “care” looks shallow, or simply false, without it.

Pensions are just the most easily fixed problem. In fact, despite the stereotype of wealthy, gin-swigging retirees sunning themselves beside their pools, the vast majority of UK citizens living in the European Union do not draw one. Some 80% of us are under 65, mostly pursuing careers and bringing up families in the free way permitted by UK membership of the union – with the thousand rules, large and small, that make this possible. We are also the grafters who deliver British trade and culture – the things meant to put the “great” back into post-Brexit Britain – to our biggest trading partner.

For many of us, the impact of Brexit is already devastating. Imagine being unable to make, with any security, basic decisions about whether, for example, one can return to the UK temporarily to look after an elderly parent, take employment in another EU country or even send children to university in the UK without risking the loss of acquired rights associated with long-term EU residence. As the Lords EU committee has pointed out, EU citizenship rights are so intertwined as to make them indivisible. A “right to remain” is only a small part of it. We need to hear from the UK government (and the EU) that its plan is to maintain all the rights we acquired when, in good faith, we moved to Europe as fully paid-up EU citizens. That will require creating new categories of residents in both the EU and UK – “those in place before Brexit” – but, given the other complexities involved, this seems relatively simple.

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Until recently, I agreed that reciprocity was the best way to achieve this. It may still prove effective, but the evidence so far suggests it is mostly being used as a smoke-screen. It was shocking to read in the Brexit white paper, for example, the government’s claim that it had engaged a range of stakeholders, including expatriate groups. In fact, the largest groups working to help UK citizens in Europe, despite their best efforts, have been unable to talk to the Brexit ministry. I know that, mostly in the weeks since that claim was made, the consular service has reached out. I joined a focus group it ran in the southern Spanish town of Mijas recently. The two Brexit ministry representatives who had been invited failed to turn up. They had been kept in London to help quash the rebellious Lords, some of whom were putting forward amendments to the EU withdrawal bill in order to safeguard the rights of the same people they might have been listening to.

It is not surprising that the government does not understand us. Unlike other countries, Britain has long ignored its diaspora. This is curious, because we are the EU’s biggest exporter of migrants, with about 5 million Britons, or 8% of UK citizens, living abroad. Many of those of us who live in the EU were prevented from voting in the referendum that turned our lives upside down, can no longer vote in general elections and have no MP. May says she will correct this but, again, has not lifted a finger to do so. With no voice or impact in parliament, we remain completely in her power.