Hongkongers in the UK: Visas, Security and Services

Blair McDougall Excerpts

Thursday 17th October 2024 Westminster Hall

[Blair McDougall (East Renfrewshire) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Vickers. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Altrincham and Sale West (Mr Rand) on securing this debate.

Before I was elected, I worked with dissidents, democrats and human rights defenders, including many in the territory of the People’s Republic of China. Earlier this week, along with the hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Bobby Dean), I was elected to chair the all-party parliamentary group on Hong Kong, and like the hon. Member for Farnham and Bordon (Gregory Stafford) I am a member of IPAC. These issues have always been of political interest to me, but since my election they have also become constituency issues. As with many other Members, many of the 144,000 Hongkongers who have come to join us in this country have decided to settle in my constituency of East Renfrewshire, and in particular in Newton Mearns. They always say three things: first and foremost, that they are delighted to be here; secondly, that they wish the weather were better in Scotland—

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

So do we!

[Blair McDougall]

We do.

Thirdly, those Hongkongers say that, although they are now living in a free country, they are not living free from fear. It is little wonder, given that in Glasgow we had a similar story to the one the hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington recounted: there were reports of a secret police station being run in the basement of the Loon Fung Chinese restaurant. Like the previous Government, this Government have made it clear on many occasions that such oppression on British soil is not acceptable, but I would be interested to hear what more can be done and whether we can keep under review the diplomatic privileges given to organisations such as the Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office to ensure they are not used as organs of transnational repression.

My hon. Friend the Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Neil Coyle) asked what extra support can be given to make diaspora groups serving Hongkongers in the UK more resilient to that repression. In addition, can work be done to come up with an accepted definition of “transnational oppression”? This debate is about Hongkongers, but autocrats are increasingly reaching beyond their own borders, so this issue affects many other diaspora groups.

Other Members mentioned Jimmy Lai, and his case rests on all our consciences. He is a 77-year-old man whose health is failing, and he is in solitary confinement in a Hong Kong jail, in the baking heat. He has been denied independent medical access and consular access, and is facing a life sentence after a trial without a jury. That case rests heavily on the minds of Hongkongers, who are unsure whether they will be able to access consular assistance if something goes wrong. I urge the Minister to address that and assure Hongkongers, including BNOs, that by default they will be treated as British nationals for the purpose of consular assistance.

I echo the concerns other Members have mentioned about electronic travel authorisation. The assumption that if someone has had a custodial sentence of more than 12 months they would be refused such an authorisation particularly worries Hongkongers, because if someone has been a political prisoner—or they are one of the more than 1,000 political prisoners still in Hong Kong— the average sentence is far longer than 12 months. It would make it far harder for them to flee here if they needed to.

What I and other hon. Members are asking the Minister today is about the principle that Hongkongers are British, and because they are British they deserve the same protections, privileges and opportunities as any British citizen. That has a wider symbolic importance for us, as well. We are engaged in a global struggle between autocrats and liberal democracies. The people of Hong Kong stood up and said what side of that battle they were on. For all the brutality and repression they face, we have to show that we as a country will continue to stand beside them, and that we have clearly chosen a side in that global struggle.