The grilling of Immigration minister Caroline Nokes by the Home Affairs Select Committee was yet more evidence that a ‘no deal’ Brexit would be a total mess. On immigration, as with every other area, the government is clearly unprepared and the systems in place are bound to fail.

Even if, as I expect, this scenario is avoided, the encounter raised serious concerns about how the government will treat EU nationals after we leave the EU. If Brexit Britain is going to succeed and prosper, if we really do want to be ‘global Britain’, the repulsive ‘hostile environment’ policy must end. Sadly, it has been made clear that it will instead be expanded to include three million people who until March 29th are our fellow EU citizens.

Caroline Nokes told MPs that businesses will need to make rigorous checks to ascertain whether EU citizens have a right to be in the UK. Though she conceded that employers would find it “almost impossible” to identify EU citizens with the right to work in the UK but who have not yet secured the new “settled status,” and admitted there was “absolutely going to be a difficultly” in differentiating between “those who have been here and not been through the process and those who have come as visitors and then seek to work.”

Nokes told the committee that the government would take a “pragmatic approach”, but this seems highly dubious when one considers the record of the hostile environment policy and the Home Office’s record. There are ominous signs of how we are going to treat, or mistreat, our friends, neighbours and former fellow citizens.

The hostile environment is completely the wrong basis for Brexit Britain to be open and global. It’s a means of creating the kind of country Nigel Farage and the leave.eu mob want. It forces civil society – such as businesses, landlords and charities – to act as a hostile arm of the state in targeting migrants ripe for deportation. For individuals and organisations lacking the resources to carry out these checks, it’s easier to filter out people by using surnames or accents. How long before people who seem a bit too “European” are persecuted in the same way? If we’re not careful this is exactly the kind of country Brexit Britain will become.

The Windrush crisis happened because the ‘hostile environment’ persecuted a group of migrants that been granted rights but had never needed paperwork or documented evidence to prove they held those rights. The writing is on the wall, as three million EU citizens are enveloped into Britain’s “hostile environment” all the same key factors are set to produce an appalling Windrush style scandal that shames us as a country and ruins people’s lives needlessly.

During the EU referendum, Brexit campaigners offered assurances about the rights of EU citizens which have now been wholly discredited. Right now, millions of people are feeling anxious about their future, good people who have contributed to this country enormously. To avoid yet more stains on our reputation, and to prevent Brexit Britain being a petty, insular and nasty place – as it has been so often caricatured – these draconian ‘hostile’ policies must change.