Mr T
Senior Member
For goodness sake, are you that ignorant of how Parliaments actually work?
No, I just have a proportionate view of how things work. Lobbying does not equate to meaningful influence. Anyone can lobby, whether it works of not is a different matter.
If business lobbying overrode the views of MPs, the UK wouldn't have a minimum wage and it certainly wouldn't be pushing £9 an hour.
The City of London Corporation has a permanent representative who sits right next to the Speaker in the House of Commons. His job is to ensure the City's interests are protected, and to directly lobby MPs.
You're talking about the City "Remembrancer". He (or she) can observe proceedings but cannot vote or intervene. In that respect they're no different than a member of the public sitting in the gallery. Similarly they can't see legislation in draft before it's made available to the public.
The office does sometimes give evidence to committees about legislation and review it to see how it might affect the City, but that's about it. The role is largely ceremonial apart from that.
The Whitehall Bureaucracy and Business will be pointing this out to Boris Johnson and his fellow Cabinet Ministers.
Any concerns the Foreign Office had appears to have been considered. I think it was in March, there was a discussion in Cabinet about the issue of HK and BNO passports. At the time the Home Secretary was in favour of changing the law and the Foreign Secretary wasn't. But now that the Foreign Secretary is on board - and indeed making many of the public announcements on the subject - that would appear to show that concerns about a Chinese response have been taken noted but not changed the government's position.
Also, the Foreign Office has no role in the management of immigration. The Home Office is much less worried about diplomacy than the FCO. So I doubt Home Office civil servants would be against a change in the law either.
Next, China hasn't said what it will do. It has made generic threats, like does when arms sales are made to Taiwan or countries criticise it on human rights grounds. There's no reason to believe it will take measures that will make a difference. Like it made threats against Australia and all it did in the end was put some import restrictions on barley. That hasn't changed Australian policy. In fact, I understand there are new rules coming that will restrict foreign takeover of Australian firms on national security grounds, which is largely aimed at China.
If China said something really concrete, like "if you extend immigration rights to HK residents, we will put a total trade and investment embargo on the UK as soon as the transition period with the EU has ended", that might cause a rethink. But if it's just the usual "we'll do something you might not like", I don't see anyone stepping in to help Beijing - unless the new security legislation is surprisingly narrowly-focused and former critics are less worried.
EDIT: Also, I'm slightly confused by your expectations of what will happen next. Are you saying that the UK government will not put the bill forward because of lobbying, or that it will put the bill forward but will be voted down by backbencher MPs?
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