Olly Glover
Main Page: Olly Glover (Liberal Democrat - Didcot and Wantage)Department Debates - View all Olly Glover's debates with the Home Office
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Shockat Adam
I agree with the hon. Gentleman.
Having a policy like the current one also flies in the face of the Prime Minister’s pre-election pledge. It is a betrayal of his sixth pledge, which we were told was:
“an immigration system rooted in compassion and dignity.”
I, and I am sure many others, feel the betrayal most sharply when it comes from an Asian Home Secretary—someone whose own journey reflects the promise of migration, but who now advances policies that punish people who are just like her own family and mine once were.
Apart from the policy being morally bankrupt, it also flies in the face of fiscal responsibility. We are told that this issue is all about cost, and that migration is a burden. Yet those claims collapse under scrutiny. The widely cited £234 billion “ILR emergency figure” has been discredited even by its own authors. Correct the errors and migration delivers a net fiscal gain of £100 billion.
Shockat Adam
I am sorry, but I cannot do so, in the interest of time.
Security results in integration. Insecurity results in chaos, not to mention the serious possibility of exploitation of people by employers; colleagues have already made the point about indentured labour.
When did modern Britain become such a transactional country? If we truly want an integrated Britain, the last thing we want is longer waiting times, uncertainty and a broken promise. What we need is certainty—five years’ maximum for the process, with fast decisions—and a real acknowledgement that migration, when it is organised with respect and fairness, strengthens a country rather than weakening it.
Mike Martin (Tunbridge Wells) (LD)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Edward. On Saturday, I met with 200 members of the Paddock Wood Hong Kong community. You are probably wondering, Sir Edward, why 200 people would give up their early Saturday evening to see me. They did so because they were worried, for themselves and for their families. They came to voice their fear that their pathway to settlement had narrowed, and they came because the conditions under which they uprooted their lives in Hong Kong and came to Britain are being changed. I am deeply disappointed that the promise made by the British Government on which they came here is now potentially being rewritten.
Let us go into some detail. I am grateful that the Hong Kong BNO route will continue to allow settlement after five years, but there have been two changes: one on language requirements, and one on earnings thresholds. On language, many BNO families came here as three-generational units, in which there of course are quite elderly people. Obviously, it is more difficult for those people to achieve a much higher standard of English proficiency—any hon. Member who has learned a language in their life will know that it is easier to do at 20 than at 80—so what are they to do? If a person is 80 and fails a higher language requirement, would they get sent back to Hong Kong while the rest of their family remained? The Government need to look at that in more detail.
On income requirements, three-generational family units have come, as I said. Some 70% of BNO visa holders are degree educated, and they are working in jobs that are significantly below their professional level and standing.
Ian Sollom (St Neots and Mid Cambridgeshire) (LD)
It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Sir Edward. I am grateful to the petitioners for bringing this important matter to Parliament, and to the hon. and learned Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Tony Vaughan) for leading the debate.
The Government are right to say that settlement should be earned through contribution—few would dispute that principle. The consultation documents point to a system that contradicts those stated goals. I am sure the Minister will say that no final decisions have been made, but the direction of travel is clear. A 10-year baseline for most routes—15 years for care workers, as many Members have mentioned—with complex reductions based largely on salary, fundamentally misunderstands what settlement is for.
Olly Glover
My hon. Friend makes a good point about salaries and how income levels are not necessarily a good predictor of usefulness to society and economic contribution. We have heard that point made clearly about social workers, but does he agree that in high-tech sectors such as space, biotech and robotics, we need global talent and that only by pooling that talent will we succeed, which is why we should not be putting in place these barriers to indefinite leave to remain?
Ian Sollom
I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend, and will shortly cite an example of that from my constituency. The key distinction to make is between selection and settlement. Our visa system is the selection mechanism; we judge whether someone has the skills we need, meets the thresholds, and fills a genuine vacancy. Settlement is about whether people can actually plan a future here and commit to staying. Five years of working, paying taxes, learning English and staying out of trouble is earning it. Extending it to 10 or 15 years does not raise standards; it just makes Britain unattractive to exactly the people our visa system should be welcoming.
I will give a concrete example. I have a constituent who came in on the high potential individual visa, which is a route explicitly designed to attract the world’s best talent. He is a skilled engineer; he chose the UK based on the clear five-year pathway. He tells me that had a 10-year route been the policy, he would never have come. That is the reality when we are competing for talent.
The Government also claim that the changes will improve integration, but uncertainty is the enemy of integration. Someone who knows they can settle after five years will invest fully in their future here; someone facing 10 to 15 years of uncertainty will keep their options open elsewhere. Another constituent who has been in touch is an orthopaedic surgeon, a professional serving our NHS. He has three children in British schools. He tells me that if the rules change, he cannot wait for another six years. He will leave, and our NHS and our country will lose him and his talent.
The moral stakes are clearest when I hear from Hongkongers in my constituency. While they may be exempted from the extension to 10 years, the consultation leaves unclear what “earned settlement” actually means for them—higher English requirements, income thresholds, whether any exemption is permanent. That is for people who fled political persecution based on our word to them. When we create uncertainty for people who follow the rules and contribute, it damages trust in British commitments.
By all means, use the visa system for selection—we can have many separate debates on that—but settlement terms should enable the people we decided to welcome to commit to staying. The current direction undermines both our economic interests and our reputation for fairness, and I urge the Government to change course.