So what should the government do?
First, and urgently - and our current "lame-duck" government under David Cameron will have to address this issue in some form - it needs to announce quickly the rules under which EU nationals currently resident in the UK will be granted permanent residence. This is not just a matter of saying that people who are here on June 23rd can stay. What about their spouses and children? What about people who came here, lived here for a number of years, then returned to their home country? Remember that given we have no population register, and that EU nationals are not require to have visas, we wont actually know who is here on June 23rd. The only practical procedure would appear to be that suggested by UKIPs migration spokesman,, Steven Woolf, that anyone whod registered for a National Insurance number prior to the referendum would be guaranteed residence rights. But even this will not address the more complex cases, of which there will be many thousand. At the same time the government will need to try to address the understandable concerns of Britons abroad; of course it will have no direct control, but a generous offer to EU nationals here would help.
Second, the new administration should announce that it will take advantage of the (at least) two year period before we actually leave to the EU to conduct a widespread public consultation on the new policy framework, possibly coordinated by the respected and independent Migration Advisory Committee. The referendum will have been won on the basis that taking control means we can decide who comes to this country according to our needs; the consultation should address, from the bottom, what - and who- it means. In particular, if there is a target, it should come from this bottom up analysis, not the top down, as with the present one. That is, we should work out which types of migration we want to control and how, and work out what that means for numbers, not the other way around. This will not be just a matter of tweaks to the current system for non-EU migration; EU migrants fill a wide variety of current jobs, by no means all low-skilled, that would not qualify under the current system.
Finally, it needs to take immediate action to address legitimate local concerns over the impact of migration on public services. Given that public spending cuts will continue for some time, and meanwhile nothing will happen to migration policy for at least two years, there is a risk of public frustration if they see that nothing has changed on the ground. This should include the establishment of a proper, and properly funded, Migration Impact Fund (MIF). The earlier MIF (ended after the 2010 election) was both underfunded and underpublicised, and hence did little to address legitimate public concerns. A new MIF should be quasi-automatic, channelling funds to the NHS, schools and councils at a local level, based on timely local data on the scale of migration (using, for example, National Insurance numbers and GP registrations). Its existence and the flow of money should be well publicised. The MIF wont be a panacea as long as central government continues to cut overall funding for services, people in areas of high migration flows will understandably see migrants adding to extra demand, even if the net impact at national level of migrants on the public finances is positive. Nevertheless it would be a tangible demonstration of government commitment to address the issue.