Indefinite Leave to Remain

John Milne Excerpts

Monday 2nd February 2026 Westminster Hall

[John Milne (Horsham) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Edward. Last week, I met 30 or so members of the Hong Kong community in Horsham. These people are professionals: they are teachers, students, engineers, doctors, business owners and directors. They are in work, paying tax, buying homes, raising families and contributing to local life. They came here legally. They came because the British Government made them a promise.

In talking to them, what struck me most was not anger but fear—fear that the basis on which they uprooted their lives is now shifting beneath them. Given the strength of feeling, the numbers affected and Hong Kong’s unique historical context as a former colony, I trust that the Government recognise that the recent proposed changes to indefinite leave to remain will have unintended consequences, and that they will want to address this matter urgently.

In Horsham, nearly 90% of BNO households are homeowners. Clearly, they are not a drain on public resources, and are financially stable, yet some will nevertheless struggle to meet the new income threshold. Some family groups include older applicants, carers or non-working spouses, just as we would expect in any household. Many cannot simply earn more to bridge the gap, and others will take time to move into higher-paid work and transfer their skills and qualifications. Will the Government consider taking account of assets and long-term stability, not earned income alone, when assessing ILR applications for Hong Kong BNOs? My constituents are also deeply concerned about the English language requirement: four in five of them say that they are worried about passing the exam, and they are people who seemed quite fluent when I spoke to them. Obviously this affects older applicants in particular.

These families moved across the world on a promise from the British Government, and there is now a genuine risk that that promise will be broken. In all honesty, I do not think that this new law was ever intended to affect them at all. My asks from the Minister are straightforward: exempt Hong Kong BNOs from the new earned settlement criteria, provide transitional protections for those already on the five-year settlement pathway, and assess household income, not individual income, to keep families together.

Asylum Seekers: Support and Accommodation

John Milne Excerpts

Monday 20th October 2025 Westminster Hall

[Tony Vaughan]

I completely agree with my hon. Friend.

I will turn now to the issue of asylum support, and make two key points. First, people claiming asylum cannot access the UK’s mainstream benefits system. They receive initial full-board accommodation for 90 days, plus about £10 weekly. After that they move to longer-term housing and get around £49.18 a week for food, clothing and toiletries, which is much less than universal credit rates.

Secondly, the UK’s asylum support system is not a pull factor, as some, including Migration Watch, have claimed. The UK rate of £49.18 weekly barely beats France’s €47.60. Once we add in the costs of making an illegal crossing from France, the UK benefits system does not leave an adult male asylum seeker in a better position than in France. Evidence also shows that family, community and cultural connections matter far more than the benefits system.

Picture this, Dr Murrison: imagine that tomorrow we cut all asylum seeker financial support and closed all asylum hotels. What would happen next? Without alternatives, it would increase rough sleeping by over 500%, with over 30,000 more destitute people on our streets. That approach would clearly be immoral, as I trust hon. Members would agree. It would also pile massive pressure on social services, local authorities, NHS emergency services and the police.

The petitioners’ alternative to state support in the community is mass detention. Migration Watch also calls for the detention of all asylum claimants, as its director told me in a conversation last week as I prepared for this debate. Let us think that through. It would clearly be unlawful. It would also be inhumane, financially ruinous and completely useless. There are about 102,000 people in UK asylum accommodation, but our immigration detention capacity is only 2,200, so we would need a massive new detention facility expansion for immediate mass detention.

What would that expansion cost? Based on Ministry of Justice prison expansion plans, the National Audit Office estimates that a single new prison place would cost at least £470,000, excluding land and other costs. That is £47 billion for 100,000 detention places, which is about a third of the entire NHS budget. On top of that, immigration detention costs are about £122 per day, adding up to around £4.5 billion per year for that number of people. Clearly, detention on that scale would mean massive cuts to public services and huge tax rises.

[John Milne (Horsham) (LD)]

We would all like to see an end to the use of hotels, which is both wasteful and very unpopular in local communities. However, would the hon. and learned Member agree that the long-term solution to that, releasing pressure across the entire system, is a proper returns agreement with as many countries as possible, but definitely with France, so that we do not need to use any form of accommodation, large camps or hotels?

[Tony Vaughan]

We did have a returns agreement with Europe before we withdrew from the European Union—the Dublin regulation. It was this Government that negotiated a new agreement with France in the UK-France deal. That deal, which is compliant with all the international obligations we have, is the potential way forward to solving the problem.