Indefinite Leave to Remain

Jamie Stone Excerpts

Monday 8th September 2025 Westminster Hall

[Rachel Blake (Cities of London and Westminster) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Jeremy. I thank the Petitions Committee for scheduling this important debate, and I welcome the spirit in which it has been conducted so far: the original purpose of debating indefinite leave to remain has been respected and we have risen above the appalling and divisive rhetoric that we have heard recently in relation to the role of migration and the lives of asylum seekers.

My constituency has a long track record of welcoming migrants and refugees. The historic neighbourhoods of the City of London, Soho, Fitzrovia and Pimlico are just some of the villages in the very centre of London that have a long track record of welcoming people. They continue to be proud of their diverse heritage. Indeed, our country prides itself on fairness and stability in our approach to the law and to migration and asylum policy. We are a place where people come to build and rebuild their lives, and to invest in their futures. I think we are all richer for that.

[Jamie Stone (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) (LD)]

On behalf of the Petitions Committee, I thank the hon. Member for her thanks. Far away from London in the highlands of Scotland, the same is true: we have refugees who have fitted in and been greatly welcomed. May I make the point to the Minister that involving the devolved institutions, such as the Scottish Government, the Welsh Assembly and the Northern Ireland Assembly, will be hugely important if we are going to make all this work?

[Rachel Blake]

I thank the hon. Member for that contribution.

I want to focus my remarks on those who have BNO visas and particularly on the importance of stability in that system. I first became particularly interested in the lives of people living in Hong Kong because of my constituent, Jimmy Lai, who is currently interred in Hong Kong because he stood up for freedom and democracy. That brought me to be profoundly concerned about the importance of BNO visas.

While it is absolutely right that we should be discussing how we appropriately balance the many benefits of migration with the concerns that some people have about the current system, I do think it important that we have stability in the system and recognise that the bar to securing indefinite leave to remain is already high. I will be focusing very closely on the Home Office proposals to ensure that we are standing by those principles and the values of fairness and stability.

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[Yasmin Qureshi (Bolton South and Walkden) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Pritchard. I welcome the Minister to his new Department. I worked with him when he was in the Department for Housing, Communities and Local Government; he listened, and I got £20 million for the regeneration of Farnworth in my constituency. I hope he is in a listening mood today and will do what we are asking him to do.

It is an absolute privilege to speak in this debate on behalf of many families who have come to the United Kingdom either under the British national overseas visa scheme or on work permits to work in our country, often in areas that are difficult to recruit for—for example, the social care sector. With an ageing population, such jobs are unfilled, as are roles in the IT sector and many other industries.

On Friday, I met the Salford Hongkongers group. They explained to us why many of them left Hong Kong, fleeing from persecution. They have been working hard, as my hon. Friend the Member for Salford (Rebecca Long Bailey) mentioned, and they make a great contribution to our economy, as, of course, have others who have come to work in the social care sector, where the jobs are not the nicest and the pay is often not great either. They are all working very hard.

What they have in common is that when they made the decision to come to the United Kingdom, they believed in certain fundamental rules, one of which was that after five years they would be able to apply for indefinite leave to remain. Of course, it was not guaranteed that they would get leave, because there are other criteria to satisfy—such as having worked for five years, meeting a certain level of pay and being of good character—but at least they knew what they were working towards.

I urge the Government and the Minister to reconsider the proposed changes—we do not yet know exactly what those changes are—for two reasons. It is manifestly unfair to change the rules for people who came on the basis of what they understood the rules to be. Retrospective legislation is always bad legislation. It has been done occasionally, but normally only in a state of immediate national emergency. I do not think this situation falls into that category, by any description,. For me, being British is about knowing the laws, knowing the rules and abiding by them. That is exactly what these people have done.

[Jamie Stone]

The hon. Lady mentions, quite correctly, the role of these wonderful people caring for the elderly. Let me give one example. I have cases in my constituency in the far north of Scotland where the care package has fallen through for lack of care workers, and those poor old people have been readmitted to hospital. That is a disgrace, and it is precisely one of the reasons why I completely back what she is saying.

[Yasmin Qureshi]

I thank the Chair of the Petitions Committee for that helpful intervention. In all honesty, what people are asking for is fairness. That is it—simple fairness.