Indefinite Leave to Remain

Pippa Heylings Excerpts

Monday 8th September 2025 Westminster Hall

[Pippa Heylings (South Cambridgeshire) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Jeremy. I congratulate the hon. Member for South Norfolk (Ben Goldsborough) and all who have successfully brought this petition forward. I rise today, as many others have, in support of the petition calling for Hong Kong British national overseas visa holders to retain their indefinite leave to remain settlement.

As we have heard, such visas are a lifeline; they are a moral commitment created in response to Beijing’s crackdown on human rights and democracies. Families made life-changing decisions, leaving their homes, relatives and friends on the understanding that if they worked hard, paid their way, built their lives here and contributed, they could settle permanently after five years. To move the goalposts retrospectively would not only cause distress, but be a betrayal of everything that they think we stand for and that we hope we stand for, namely that we keep our word.

I have so many wonderful examples of Hongkongers in my constituency. For example, a constituent wrote to me about two people who had become invaluable to their community in Cherry Hinton. They help to run toddler groups and holiday clubs for more than 180 children, supporting families who speak little English. They are law-abiding, hard-working and deeply committed to their community, and yet they now live in fear that the rules will change midway, leaving their futures here uncertain.

I see no reason why those who are already here and contributing should be thrown into that level of anxiety. To delay their right to settlement would upend carefully prepared plans, heap financial pressure on families who are already struggling with the cost of living, and deny children who have grown up here their right to home fee tuition at university.

[Alex Sobel (Leeds Central and Headingley) (Lab/Co-op)]

As well as those financial and educational anxieties, many Hongkongers, some of whom do not have permanent status here, are under threat from transnational repression, as the recent report from the Joint Committee on Human Rights shows. That includes having a bounty on their head. Is it not the case that we are putting anxiety on people who may be at risk of harm if they can no longer stay here?

[Pippa Heylings]

The hon. Member makes a really important point. Delaying their settled status would leave many of these people unprotected when travelling abroad and raise the stakes in terms of their own and their families’ security. Many families are already financially stretched and, as we have heard, that is often exacerbated by the fact that BNO visa holders are blocked from accessing their pension savings with the mandatory provident fund. With settled status, that would no longer be the case. They have told me that that would be best for everyone because they would then be contributing—they do not want to be a burden on the public purse.

We must never forget what is at stake, as my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park (Sarah Olney) has said. In Hong Kong, nearly 1,000 political prisoners remain behind bars for daring to exercise their democratic right. It is neither safe nor realistic for Hongkongers to return. The petition before us is clear and just. It calls on us to stand by the word we gave and allow those on BNO visas to settle after five years, not 10. I urge the Government and the Minister to provide clarity and reassurance, and to exempt from these reforms all who are already here on BNO visas.