Steve Race

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Edward. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (James Naish) on securing this debate and on making such a powerful case. First, I welcome many of the Home Secretary’s announcements from last week about reforms to the asylum and immigration system, particularly the proposal to develop safe and legal routes, and a move to a community sponsorship model that is very much based on the Ukrainian and Hong Kong schemes. I hope that it will break the pull factors that force migrants into the hands of people smugglers and into using the treacherous cross-channel route. Moving on to the substance of the debate, Hongkongers in Devon is a community interest group based in my constituency. It was founded by Dennis Mak, and it estimates that there are about 1,000 Hongkongers in Devon, most of whom are based in Exeter. Many are teachers, university lecturers, nurses, IT professionals and so on, and they are enriching our community and contributing to the local economy. Our Hongkonger community is exceptionally active, holding Chinese new year breakthrough events, a mid-autumn festival lunch, and dragon boat racing on the River Exe. Both culturally and economically, Hongkongers in Exeter are a valued and vital part of our community. Having worked with Hongkongers to make the case to Government on a range of issues—including the conditions of their visas, their ability to access funds still held in the Chinese system, and of course Chinese state monitoring of Hongkongers in the UK—I greatly welcome the Government’s Command Paper, published last week, which confirms that British national overseas visa holders would be fully exempted from the proposed earned settlement criteria and maintain a five-year route to indefinite leave to remain, in recognition of their unique circumstances and, indeed, the UK’s historic responsibilities to the people of Hong Kong. I know that the community welcomes that. Will the Minister comment on how else we might support the Hong Kong community in the UK, in particular the request for a special British identity for their newborns who are born in the UK, in order to guarantee their rights and recognition as integral members of the community in the future? Hongkongers are also asking for a simplified route for BNO passport holders seeking British citizenship. I know that the Government have worked hard to clarify many areas of the visa settlement regime for Hongkongers, and I welcome that. However, my question for the Minister is: how can we ensure that we provide total clarity for those communities?