The GSD says that the fact that the Government did not even seek freedom of movement for Gibraltar residents and Gibraltarians is a "significant admission and lost opportunity in the EU-UK negotiations."

A statement continued: "The defensiveness of the Government on this issue is totally misleading on the facts as well as being a nervous smokescreen.

"The Government says freedom of movement could not have been obtained by Gibraltar because unlike Liechtenstein we are not a sovereign state and could not enter into an agreement with the EU. But that totally misses the obvious point that nothing being obtained in the EU-UK agreement is being obtained because Gibraltar has itself entered into the agreement. By its very nature this is an international agreement being entered into by the UK (as sovereign State) for Gibraltar.

"Article 2(5) of the Schengen Borders Code defines persons having the right of free movement under Union law as including: “third country nationals and their family members, whatever their nationality, who under agreements between the Union…and those third countries…enjoy rights of free movement equivalent to those Union citizens.”

"Such persons under Article 2(6) of the Schengen Borders Code do not fall within the definition of “third country national” and as such would not then be restricted to the 90-day rule under Article 6.

"In that same way the UK for Gibraltar could have entered into an agreement that secured freedom of movement rights for residents of Gibraltar as envisaged by Article 2(5) of the Schengen Borders Code. That would have meant the right to reside in EU, the right to work and the right to travel without being subject to the 90-day rule. But it is now clear that the Gibraltar Government did not even ask the EU to grant this to Gibraltar."

Leader of the Opposition, Keith Azopardi said:

“We now know that they did not even try to obtain these fuller rights for people which is another missed opportunity along the way. Given the things given away in this negotiation we would have thought our aspirations could have been higher.

"The fact that EU citizens would have had equivalent rights in Gibraltar cannot be the answer to why this was not sought. EU citizens had such rights when we were in the EU and this would have carried on if we had remained within it. When I originally made the comments on Tuesday it was as much a question as a statement as we were unclear whether the Government had tried to get this and failed. It would be more understandable if that had been the case.

"But to be told they didn’t even try to secure freedom of movement in exchange for the economic and other concessions made is stunning.

"Finally for the Government to say that this issue that would have made it impossible for the GSD to participate in EU negotiations with the Government is yet another ridiculous repositioning of their exclusionary narrative and defensiveness on the contents of the deal they brought back to Gibraltar. Their issuing of nervous press releases on other Treaty issues of freedom of movement or about the length of the termination clause seems more about distracting the public from the fact that under the Agreement they also negotiated the presence of Spanish officers in Gibraltar in different guises. Rather than red herrings they should perhaps finally accept the reality that this Treaty contains so-called boots on the ground and that they did a u-turn on that issue.”