Nationality and Borders Bill — House of Lords, 2022-02-10
Topic: Immigration
Christopher Francis Patten (Conservative, Centre-right): I will be very brief in supporting that speech and this amendment, not because I do not feel passionately and strongly about it—I do—but, first, out of a late-evening act of charity to the crowds that are still with us this evening and, secondly, because the purpose of the amendment was explained so clearly by the noble Lord a moment ago I perhaps do not spend enough time praising the Government for things that they have done, but I praise without qualification the lifeboat that is the BNO passport scheme, which is imaginative and has been set out and pursued with considerable competence by the Government. One result is that, in the last three months, 90,000 Hong Kongers came to live in our country. Overwhelmingly, the heads of household were young professionals. The latest figures in Hong Kong suggest that, of those working for medical services, the number of doctors has decreased by 5% and the number of nurses has decreased by almost 8%, and there has been a huge drop in the number of teachers—1,000, I think, have left. Most of them have come here. It may be a matter of amazement to the Chancellor that fewer of the young entrepreneurs have come here than have gone to Australia, Canada and the United States, but nevertheless a number of people who will make a huge contribution to our society have come here The amendment before your Lordships repairs a hole in this lifeboat. It is very important to do so, for the reasons that the noble Lord has just made clear and that I will refer to again in a moment. But why is this lifeboat necessary at all? Shortly before he became Trade Minister, my noble friend Lord Grimstone referred to the "strong authoritarian guidance" that had been offered to Hong Kong by Xi Jinping, which he said was very good for banks. It might be good for banks—although that is questionable—but it is not very good for people. It has gone rather beyond "strong authoritarian guidance" We know what has happened: there has been a vengeful and comprehensive assault on all of the freedoms that we associate with an open society. Take freedom of speech: journalists have been locked up, proprietors have been incarcerated and newspapers’ funds have been frozen. Anyone who protests this is locked up. People are locked up for wanting to light a candle to mark the 4 June vigil of Tiananmen every year. The Pillar of Shame, as it was called, in the University of Hong Kong, reminding people of 4 June, was taken down in the dead of night. As my noble friend Lord Hague pointed out in a Times article earlier this week, to which the noble Lord has just referred, there has been an absolutely comprehensive assault on all of the freedoms that Hong Kong was promised it would continue to exercise for 50 years after 1997 My main critic when I was the last colonial oppressor was a very distinguished diplomat, Percy Cradock, who used to say—and was happy to be quoted as such—of the leadership in Beijing that they may be "thuggish dictators" but they are "men of their word". We know that at least one of those things is correct. It is a terrible example of the problem we face today that the Chinese Communist Party has behaved towards Hong Kong in a way that confirms that it cannot be trusted to keep its word in international affairs. That is something we have to think about when we are working out how to share this planet with China, almost 50 years to the day since President Nixon went to Beijing to see Mao This amendment is extremely important. The noble Lord pointed out that 93% of those who have been arrested for protest-related offences are aged between 18 and 24. They are young people whose lives will be blighted. With this amendment, which has been sensibly circumscribed to take account of criticisms in another place, as the noble Lord pointed out, we want to give those people who were born after 1997 the chance, like their parents, to live in and contribute to this country As the noble Lord said, the amendment was supported right across the other place and by both wings of the Conservative Party—I am not quite sure what flying object they support at the moment but, extraordinarily, both wings supported this amendment. Nobody else can manage that but this amendment has. I hope it will be accepted by this House in due course as well. It is a wonderful way for us to make absolutely clear what our commitment to Hong Kong and our last imperial responsibility has become I want to conclude by saying two related things. First, every one of my successors as chief executive in Hong Kong had either a foreign passport or members of their family with foreign passports. The present chief executive had a British passport, which she gave up to become chief executive, and her husband and her sons have British passports. I am not against that: I hope they enjoy the liberties and freedoms that come with being a British citizen with that passport. But it is an unhappy paradox that the people doing the persecuting—the quislings—including members of the police force, have British passports, and those who are being persecuted and locked up do not. I think we should address that rather unhappy imbalance in due course Lastly, today I went to the memorial service of somebody who many noble Lords will have read and some will have known: the very fine American scholar of China, and Observer and Guardian journalist, Jonathan Mirsky. He wrote about China for years. A defining moment for him was being beaten up while he was trying to follow what was happening in Tiananmen Square in 1989. He was covered in the blood of a young student who was shot standing next to him. The great thing about Mirsky, who could be extraordinarily tiresome and very awkward, was that at the heart of his journalism was an understanding of the difference between what is right and what is wrong, wicked or evil. What we are seeing from President Putin at the moment is wrong. It is wicked. What we have seen in Xinjiang and in Tibet is wicked. What is happening in Hong Kong—the destruction of one of the great free cities in the world—is wrong and we should say that it is wrong. Whenever we have an opportunity to do anything about it, we should take it.