Business leaders are bewildered by visa and work permit restrictions imposed by the UK-EU trade agreement

Farzana Baduel, CEO of London-based Curzon PR, voted for Brexit in the 2016 referendum, thinking it unfair that EU immigrants could enter the UK freely while her family members in Pakistan could not. Martin Darbyshire, head of Tangerine, a design consultancy, was a fervent Remainer and felt he had to apologise for the result during a post-referendum trip to Germany.

But both agree the Brexit trade agreement, concluded late last year, has left the UK’s service businesses bewildered about what comes next. The Trade and Co-operation Agreement replaced free movement between the UK and the EU with an array of visa and work permit restrictions. While negotiators on both sides bickered until the end about fishing rights, they failed to address the post-Brexit status of service professionals. “It was almost as if they ran out of time,” Baduel says...

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By: MICHAEL SKAPINKER