Immigration Reforms: Humanitarian Visa Routes

Debate between Imran Hussain and Pippa Heylings

Tuesday 25th November 2025 Westminster Hall

[Pippa Heylings (South Cambridgeshire) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Edward. I thank the hon. Member for Rushcliffe (James Naish) for securing this important debate on the potential impact of immigration reforms on humanitarian visa routes.

I am here to speak up for the individuals and families in my constituency of South Cambridgeshire and across the country who arrived here in moments of crisis, conflict and persecution in search of safety, dignity and a chance to rebuild their lives through safe and legal humanitarian routes. My constituents from Ukraine, Afghanistan and Hong Kong arrived here via those routes, making huge life-changing decisions, fulfilling all the established requirements and believing that the UK would stand by its words, yet they now fear that those promises and the rules-based order is being ripped up from beneath them. To tell them, years after arrival—with many of them just one year away from fulfilling the five-year eligibility requirement for indefinite leave to remain—that the rules are changing is not only unjust; it undermines the very principle of humanitarian protection.

[Imran Hussain (Bradford East) (Lab)]

Does the hon. Lady agree that at the heart of this debate is article 8 of the European convention on human rights? This is a fundamental attack. Let me make myself clear: in attacking article 8, the Home Secretary does not speak for me. Imitating Reform will only lead to further hatred and division on our streets, and that is not the way forward. Forcing people to wait 10, 15 or even 20 years for settlement is not a migration system; it is a punishment regime. It punishes ordinary workers, families and, in particular, children who have built their lives here. Does the hon. Lady agree that we need a fair and humane system, not even harsher hurdles designed to score headlines and create further division and hatred on our streets?

[Pippa Heylings]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that.

I want to turn to the punitive regimes that many of my constituents have fled in coming to this country through a fair system, and to speak principally about those constituents who are British nationals from Hong Kong. From 2021, Hongkongers were offered a humanitarian route to indefinite leave to remain in the UK. That reflected the UK’s historical and moral commitment to those people of Hong Kong who chose to retain their strong ties to the UK by taking up BNO status at the point of Hong Kong’s handover to China, following on from their previous British dependent territories citizenship. Rightly, in the wake of China’s national security law in 2020 and the breach of the Sino-British joint declaration, BNO visa holders were promised a clear and safe five-year route to settlement. Even then, that route was more restrictive than for other citizens of former British colonies.

On behalf of the many BNO visa holders in South Cambridgeshire, I thank the Government for the important reassurance that they are exempt from the changes to the length of the route for ILR eligibility. The consultation launched by the Government, however, has introduced other areas of concern for those same BNO holders. I would like the Minister to clarify two points, because although the goalposts for length have not been moved, what constitutes a goal has changed.

First, when the visa was created in 2021 there was no requirement to meet an earnings threshold. The BNO route is a family-based application and each family faces very different situations and conditions, and there are also different divisions of labour in those families. One constituent wrote to me—we know what it means when they write to us with their own stories and fears of transnational repression—about how her family came to the UK as retirees. Immediately, they faced punitive measures by the Chinese Government, who have made it impossible for them to keep their pension—